In the interest of giving more attention to a medical problem that's probably very pervasive but not much talked about, I'm coming out of the closet in this blog post as an insomniac. I have been having sleep issues for the past three years. I haven't slept for a full night in all that time, and I can count the times I've been able to fall asleep in that time without medication on one hand. Even after taking a sleeping pill (ambien, or the generic equivalent thereof), I might still not sleep very much or very well.
And why am I putting this up on the internet? A few reasons. To be perfectly honest, I hope anyone reading and wondering why my posts kind of dried up will be understanding and come back, and keep reading.
Second, I think there's a lot of guilt and shame around not being able to sleep. Somehow it's my fault, or I'm a bad person so I can't sleep, or whatever. I know I've felt like that sometimes. And like everything that is surrounded by guilt and shame, it kind of loses its power a bit when it's pulled out into the sunlight.
And third, because I'm frustrated that even the medical community seems not to take sleeping problems seriously. I can usually function fairly well on very little sleep, so often I can pass for a normal-sleeping person in day-to-day interactions. But recently, the sleeping pill of choice has seemed to stop working, and I've been getting 2 or 3 hours of sleep a night, not much better than taking nothing at all, and the past few days I've been positively dragging through the day.
I finally broke down and made an appointment with a sleep clinic. I met with the doctor, he gave me "homework" in the form of a Sleep Log, that I'm supposed to keep for two weeks, and gave me a prescription for a different kind of sleeping pill.
As the appointment was in the evening, I did not have time to get the prescription to my pharmacist until the next day. I bring it down to my pharmacy around 9:30 this morning. It turns out that my insurance will not pay for this new prescription, and that without insurance it is $230. I may be able to get a waver, but the request has to come from the doctor prescribing the medication.
So I immediately call the sleep clinic, and explain the problem to them, and they tell me that they'll get on it, to get the "special permission" that the insurance company needs in order to consider making an exception. I don't hear from them for a few hours, but then remember that my doctor wrote his phone number on the card, and figure I'll talk to him directly and let him know what is going on, and maybe I should get something that my insurance company would pay for without making me jump through a bunch of hoops. Funny story, he gave me a phone number he cannot be reached at.
I eventually get patched back into the main office of the sleep clinic, and I tell them that I want something for tonight, so if I can't get the super duper special sleeping pills, just something different than what I'm taking that will still be covered by the insurance company. The guy on the phone says he's faxing in the special request to my insurance company, and that it may take a day or two. Which means another sleepless night for me, so I say let me talk to a doctor, he says they're both in session, and someone will call me when they're available.
Fast forward to 5:30PM, and as my appointment was at 6:00PM yesterday, and that was when it looked as if the office closed up, I decide that I'd better give it one more try. I get an answering machine, telling me the regular hours are 9-5, and to leave a message and they'll get back to me tomorrow. Guess yesterday was special. My appointment was for 6:00.
So, if even the medical professionals who claim to be sleep experts don't take the problem they treat seriously, that's a problem. And don't get me started on the little prick of an insurance bureaucrat who decided that I didn't need the pills and denied me, and is probably sleeping perfectly well tonight.
So I'm coming out of the Insomnia closet. I'll let you know how it goes.
M
came up. I had just put it on the iPod, and I hadn't listened to it for years. I'd forgotten just how good those songs are. I loved them when I was younger too, but now it seems that I've kind of grown into those songs and that music. James Taylor is one of the true masters of the American song, a musical and American icon.
