Very Violent nightmares

Since before just before I was formally diagnosed as having Early onset Lewy Body Dementia, I have struggled with very bad dreams and in some cases nightmares.



These things have little or no direct link to normal life that I know of, and they are very frightening, and sometimes difficult to break free from.



I remember the first one I had which I told my consultant about when I saw her at the clinic.
It was at this point that I learnt that these were all caused by my illness and not medication of any kind.

 

 On some occasions I have got out of bed, and gone to a different room simply to break the cycle or at least try to.



I say that because when we wake up from these horrors as I call them, its difficult to decide the difference between the nightmare and reality. I have at times resorted to doing things like hitting the wall so that I know I am awake, but then that leads to sore hands the next morning.



Sometimes after doing something like watching television for half an hour, I have returned to bed only to find the whole process start again from the point it stopped. That is also very sad as I get out of bed feeling very tired and stressed.



When I have these really bad horrors during the night, I can usually remember the whole thing in great detail for at least two days afterwards, and I have written about these before, as a way of trying to find out what is causing it all to happen.



I often wonder why it is people having these don't end up having a heart attack as they are so bad, perhaps they do and its not looked into as to why it happened.



I was once given medication, which was supposed to control it all, but found it got so bad that this had to be stopped altogether, because I simply could not wake up, and in the end tried to climb out of a bedroom window to get away from this bad horror. Luckily for me the windows were locked, because I was in a hotel and our room was on the third floor.



However I understand that people who have this form of dementia struggle with some medications, so they are only used as short trials.



I recently had a very bad night which shook me rigid afterwards when I looked back at it.



It had been a very bad night and I can remember getting out of bed on two or three occasions, and sat in the room next door until I felt safe to return to bed. However each time I returned to bed the same horror started all over again.


Eventually I did wake up, and went to have a cup of tea, at which point it dawned on me, that I had never actually left the bed during the night, I had only dreamt I had, which accounted for the nightmares going on so long.



I was then so shocked about this that the next night, I did not want to go to bed, because I kept thinking, what if I thought I had woken up and had gone to the toilet?  The embarrassment would have been too much for me.



So these days I live in fear of these nights, and what may or may not happen.



On some occasions I do get up and go down stairs to write things for my blog, just to try to concentrate on something for a while, but I am nervous of waking someone else up, so I don't do it every night.