I HATE! Night Sweats

Perhaps you've noticed I haven't posted anything for a couple of days. Let's be realistic, you probably didn't notice. But in order to avoid any dramatic diatribes, let me just say that a period of my life has just come to a close and I've been a little down / out of it because of said change.

Anyway, let me get to the point of this post. I haven't been sleeping well for weeks - I would say that I've been waking up several times during the night for seemingly no good reason for the past three or four weeks. I can't figure it out. And just for the record, this major life change occurred after I had already begun to sleep badly.

It started with me waking up out of the blue in the middle of the night. I would wake up at 4 AM, then again at 5 AM, then again at 6 AM, and so on until the morning when I would actually need to get up for work. (And by that time, I was so exhausted, I could barely roll myself out of bed and into the bathroom to shower. Not joke, I think I've fallen asleep in the shower on more than one occasion.)

Sound bad, right? Well it gets worse. Since said life change, I have begun to experience what those in the medical field refer to as 'night sweats'. And let me tell you, they're pretty unpleasant. Now, instead of just waking up in the middle of the night numerous times, (and I'm warning you, this is kind of gross; you may not want to read on) I wake up sweating profusely and freezing. And when I say sweating profusely, I really mean it. Each time I wake up, the back of my shirt is drenched and I am forced to change to a clean one.

What the F? Seriously? This has been going on for a couple of night now and I am already losing my mind! Not only am I constantly exhausted (and drinking more coffee than is humanly possible and probably safe), but I am also going through clean shirts like there is no tomorrow. (And considering that I absolutely hate doing laundry, this by-product of the night sweats verges on being the most deplorable part!) And this is all beside the fact that I absolutely abhor sweating and try my very best to do it as little as possible.

Ugh, so I'm not sure whether I can attribute the night sweats to the 'life change' or what, but I'm really starting to get sick of this business. I need my sleep. I don't want to be doing laundry until I'm 90. And I certainly don't need another thing to be worried about.

Night sweats are idiotic - it's not as if I physically feel ill when I'm waking up during the night. I just wake up sweaty and cold. So pointless! I've been told they're caused by stress, which, given what's going on in my life right now, makes complete sense. Although WebMD says that any of the following can be the cause of said night sweats:

1. Menopause (Fan-fucking-tastic! I'm only 23 - this does not look good for my ovaries.)

2. Idiopathic hyperhidrosis (Apparently, this means your body has an imbalance and produces too much sweat. Great - I'm a sweaty monster.)

3. Infections (I don't need this shit.)

4. Cancer (WebMD says night sweats can be an early sign of cancer - again I'm only 23, cancer would really be most unfortunate.)

5. Medications (I'm not taking any so this must mean I am dieing of cancer.)

6. Hypoglycemia (Not diabetic, so again, clearly I am dieing of cancer.)

7. Hormone disorders (Does this mean I should be crying one moment and jumping up and down the next?)

8. Neurologic conditions (Great - my brain is going to fall out of my ear.)

So now that WebMD has thoroughly scared the shit out of me (which it has done on many many occasions before), I am going to go ponder my impending doom. Remind me to blog about how much I hate WebMD and should never ever look at it again.