The Nightmares are Back

Remember that new medication I was trying, the one that was supposed to help with my insulin/low blood sugar issues? (If you're thinking of the one with the possible side effect of me growing a beard, yep, that's the one.) I started taking the regular dose and had horrible side effects, so I lowered it down to 1/4 of a dose, which had much less side affects but still did some good. On it, my every-3 hour eating schedule got about 15 minutes of leeway, and I could eat sugar free ice cream or cookies as my nighttime snack. Also, my regular headaches went away. Exciting stuff.

Well, just recently I've been noticing my blood pressure has dropped from it's normal 90/60 (low blood pressure and low blood sugar tend to come with Addison's Disease) to the 80s over 50s. Not good. I did some googling and found out that, yes, this new medication is also used to lower blood pressure.

So now I have to go off it. It's usually not fun going off any medication, but with this one in particular, I am noticing a return of a symptoms I hadn't realized this medication had fixed. My recurring nightmares.

I have regular, recurring dreams (but never, ever exact repeats) of several situations including:

Being in an elevator when it breaks and falls.
Being in an airplane that has to crash-land on a freeway.
Trying to rescue children during war time.
My husband taking a second wife (she's always blond!)
Having to go to the bathroom in front of people (what is up with that?)

As I'm tapering down on this medication, I've noticed them coming back. Now, if you feel like psychoanalyzing them you may decide I have issues with transportation, privacy, and the need to rescue helpless people in an international setting (no big surprise there).

However, all of these dreams have one thing in common: Stress. They are all stress-filled situations, and usually they are long dreams, like when I'm trying to rescue orphans, nobody will listen to my warnings, or people are going too slow, or the van won't start, etc.

Sleep is supposed to be restful, not stressful, but I'm guessing my low blood sugar issues have my body going a little haywire in the middle of the night and thus stressing both my body and my mind.

Maybe that's why I've ground my teeth all my life. I wear a mouth guard now, so I don't completely wear away my teeth, and so my husband can keep his sanity (apparently teeth grinding can be quite loud--who knew?). Oh, and it gives the added benefit of me not waking up with an entire side of my face in pain from clenching my jaw half the night. That's nice.

So now I go to sleep with my mouth guard and my ear plugs (I don't sleep very deeply, and the clock ticking next to my bed sounds very, very loud to me for some reason. Psychoanalyze that.), and I often expect to wake up pretty much as tired as I was when I went to bed (after all, I was rescuing orphans all night, or trying desperately to find a bathroom with a door on it).

At this point I'm trying to decide if not having really low blood pressure is worth it. (If any of you have any expert medical advice on the subject, I'm all ears. I couldn't find much that was helpful online on how dangerous really low blood pressure actually is.)

I'm also supposed to taper some off my steroids, but think I'll wait awhile on that--I'm just imagining the fun dreams I'd have going off both at the same time!