Sleep (or lack thereof)

I have had a significant problem with my sleep patterns since this surgery. It seems fairly easy to get days and nights mixed up with the hospital routine of waking up (or being woken up) at all hours and then, at home, waking up to take pain medication in the middle of the night.  I also found in the early weeks, even up to the present, if I have a particularly tiring day at PT or just from overdoing around the house, that sitting in bed icing my knee makes me so incredibly sleepy that I just have to nap. I've had naps that lasted two hours, and for me this is the kiss of death for a normal bedtime. Even though I feel very tired (I never seem to recover fully from a nap), I can lie awake for hours before sleep finally comes, and then it can be a fitful sleep with many wake-up times. This must be a problem for many knee replacement patients because the PA asked me if I had difficulty sleeping.

It really isn't the pain that keeps me a wake, but the inability to find a comfortable sleeping position. For weeks after surgery, I was only able to sleep on my back, and I always slept in the same position with my left leg straight and my right one slightly bent. Now I am able to lie on my side if (and this is a big "if") I can find that one comfortable spot. Usually I can't, so I toss and turn (gingerly), and usually end up back on my back again. The PA gave me a prescription for something that isn't a sleeping pill or a muscle relaxer, but something that supposedly calms the nerve endings. That helps some, but I still continue to have problems falling asleep. This just might be me - I've always had difficulty with this, but now it is more pronounced.

Another problem is that when I have a very restless night, have a hard time falling asleep and wake up multiple times (usually every hour on the hour), when I finally get into that deep restful sleep, I sleep late into the morning. A few days I slept until 11:00 a.m., and had a hard time rising even at that hour. Of course, this exacerbates the problem - hard to go back to bed less than 12 hours since I woke up. My physical therapist suggested icing my knee for 30 minutes or so before I'm ready for sleep to see if that helps. I'll try that and let you know. But for now, this remains a problem.

If any of you reading this blog have some suggestions, I'd love to hear them.