you are getting sleepy ...?
I am the last person in the world to ever "self-diagnose" myself with any dramatic condition. but after this weekend, in which I was once again asleep for far more hours than I was awake, I begin to think perhaps my issue with not being able to wake up goes beyond mere laziness or bad habit. I added it to the list of things to chat with Dr. Medunick about after my bloodwork results later this week.
Then, in a completely random coincidence (or was it?), I came across the term "diurnal hypersomnolence" on the table of contents of the latest issue of "TransActions," the technical publication of the American Societyof Safety Engineers's transportation arm. I am familiar with what "diurnal" means (thanks to years of teaching about the difference between day-time and night-time predators) but had never heard of "hypersomnolence." So I went to my favorite resource, the Free Dictionary, which ultimately led to a page full of definitions for the term:
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hypersomnia
Particularly this definition from the American Heritage Medical Dictionary:
A condition in which one sleeps for an excessively long time but is normal in the waking intervals.
And this one from the McGraw Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine:
Excessive or prolonged sleep, which may be associated with difficulty in awakening,
I think this might be something worth looking into. In the past I've blamed excessive sleeping on my depression, but with that largely under control it's time to look at other causes. Yes, there are times when I make the conscious decision to sleep longer / ignore the world / "hermit." And there are times when the extra sleep is needed on the weekends because of the pace I keep during the week where I often don't sleep as many hours as I should (although there are some theorists out there who say that you can never really make up for lost sleep). But this weekend doesn't really fit either category -- I absolutely wanted to be engaged with the world this weekend (at least as far as getting more writing and reading done and perhaps some chores around the apartment), and any sleep I needed to make up from my long Friday (5 hours sleep on Thursday night, then being awake and active from 6am Friday morning to almost 3 am Saturday morning) should have been accomplished by Saturday afternoon. And yet, with varying moments of wakefulness (enough to say "oh, that's what time it is"), I slept until 7pm Saturday, then got out of bed and engaged the world until around 2am (a total of 7 hours), then went back to sleep and stayed in bed until 7pm again.
My struggle honestly seems to be getting out of sleep mode. Once I'm awake and moving around, I feel like a completely different person. it feels very much like I'm fighting myself, and this weekend the Sleep-Me won out over the Normal-Me.
Definitely time to get a handle on this.
Thanks for listening to me ramble on!