Oct 4, 2015
Everyone feels tired at some point. But I fight napping. If I nap, even for 15 minutes, during the daytime, I'm hit with insomnia at night and go to sleep at 4am. It all started when I stayed up later and later to write this blog and other things.
Karl Doghramji, MD, Medical Director of the Sleep Disorders Center, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, reports, "The avoidance of naps has been proposed as a method of enhancing sleep continuity on the following night."
Truer words were never uttered. When it comes to strokes specifically, The National Stroke Association (NSA) says that post-stroke fatigue, or PSF, affects as much as 70 percent of stroke survivors, especially in the early years. PSF happens without warning. PSF is not just feeling tired and wanting to take a nap. With PSF, you
have to take a nap.
The NSA identified 3 types of fatigue for stroke survivors:
- Cognitive (like mental fatigue, difficulty focusing)
- Physical (like function limitations, spasms, pain, muscular weakness, interrupted sleep)
- Emotional (like crying and laughing at odd intervals, depression)
I encountered all of them. On the cognitive side, even six years later, I still have mental fatigue and usually rest once a day; just resting, not necessarily napping. I have all of the physical ones randomly. As for emotional fatigue, I am still, somehow, motivated, but I cried and laughed at the wrong times and places the first few years. And depression? I still have it, though rarely, but doesn't everybody?
