When the Nightmares come

So let us start off this year's blogging with something spooky. Namely, sleep paralysis.

So sleep paralysis is a phenomenon that occurs while you are dreaming. Usually, dreaming occurs in REM stage of the sleep cycle. You can read up more about the sleep cycle online. Basically, when you go to sleep and start dreaming, your body becomes paralysed, to stop you from acting out your dreams and potentially hurting yourself.

Sometimes, what happens is that you wake up (i.e. you're aware of surroundings and are no longer asleep) but your body is still under the effect of paralysis and your brain is still doing some residual dreaming, so your dreams are projected into the real world while you are unable to move.

This causes some problems because how many times have you woken up from a dream (that wasn't too outlandish) thinking everything that happened did actually happen? Same thing here, while you're unable to move, you may see, hear and even feel things in your environment, which are of course aren't really there.

Sleep paralysis is generally a bad experience, most of them are nightmarish. Although some people do experience pleasant ones where they wake to musicians serenading them in their bedrooms. Is that weird? Yes. But is it horrifyingly mind-bending? Not so much. My personal experiences with it weren't of the particularly happy kind either.

Sleep paralysis is scary because, as the name implies, you are paralysed (and also paralysed by fear, heh), you can see and hear your nightmares but most of all you can feel them. Want to try and scream for help? Take delight in the fact that your voice will get stuck in your throat. If you're lucky, one of the nightmare creatures may even try to strangle or sit on you and it will feel like you can't breathe.

It is thought that sleep paralysis could explain the myths of Dracula and other night-time spooky things. The classic image of Dracula standing over a sleeping or paralysed victim seems reminiscent of an experience of sleep paralysis. It is also thought to explain the succubus and incubus. Paintings and artworks describing sleep paralysis often depict a creature sitting on the person who is sleeping, accounting the visual hallucination of the nightmare and the feeling of difficulty breathing.

This all lasts a few minutes and everything will slowly turn back to normal but it is not easy to not be afraid in the moment. Some people who experience this have found that to overcome it, stay calm and try to wiggle your fingers or a single finger, as the major muscles are more affected by paralysis than small ones and gradually move your way from your fingers until you're fully mobile again.

Then, never go to sleep ever again. Heh.

Med school (mis)adventure #2

You know sometimes when you're sick but instead of seeing a doctor, you type your symptoms into Google and the search results tells you that you have a serious disease and only a few months left on Earth?

It tends to be worse in medical school.

Now, every person ever who has attended medical school has a story like this. This is mine. Some time ago, I suddenly woke up in the morning with chest pain. The pain wasn't present the night before. The human body is liable to aches and pains every now and again so I thought "It'll go away in a few hours".

It didn't.

So then I thought "Ah sleep is when the body rests and repairs itself. I'll probably feel better tomorrow". So with some discomfort due to the pain I fell asleep. I awoke the next morning still due to pain. By that point I was a little worried but still thinking "Give it a couple of days. It'll blow over".

I was wrong.

It was worrying to me because I was experiencing sharp-ish pain near the left 5th intercostal space midclavicular line. Which is a fancy way of saying about over the heart or apex of the heart to be exact. (Literal heart here, not taking about oh she broke my heart oh boohoo kind of heart)

And ladies and gentlemen, pain around your heart is usually not a good sign.

"Wow, thanks Captain Obvious", I hear you say. Am I hearing voices? The psychosis setting in.

Anyway, I started to wonder if I had been eating right and exercising enough prior to this happening. Trying to trace the etiology of this event.

The pain occurs on breathing so that kind of ruled out a heart problem. I just checked that by holding my breath but well, studying the things I do... doesn't make me feel better about the possibilities.

At worst it was cardiac problem and less worse would be a lung issue. I was experiencing pleuritic chest pain or at least I think I was.

By day 4, I couldn't stand the worrying anymore so I went to a clinic to get a check-up. The doctor did as doctors do and told me my life changing diagnosis. I had costochondritis.

Costo freaking chondritis. For shame! By this point I'd already been in med school for several years.

Sigh.
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On another note, a friend had a birthday on April 2x. This friend is also studying medicine.

Thinking I was being clever in using some medical humour, I texted (paraphrased) -

Me: Hb 2x.4 *
Them: Thanks!
Me: What for? Haemoglobin (Hb) 2x.4 g/dL. Just saying Polycythemia.
Them:
Me: It was a good joke though right?

*supposedly short form Happy birthday 2x day of April (4th month) so 2x.4.

This person still doesn't talk to me to this day.

So there you go people. Whenever you think its a good idea to use pun-based humour, don't. Especially if its medical puns.