posted
every night I am having terrible nightmares with people chasing me, threatening me, with guns, it is really strange. Is this lyme related or stress related? I am under stress... I wake up exhausted....and I do not feel like sleeping anymore.... I am neuro lyme taking: biaxin/plaq, effexor and klonopin for the increase in anxiety and depression the lyme has caused.. my panic has subsided, (save for an allergic reaction)but depression has not. any thoughts??????? thanks kristin
Posts: 225 | From home | Registered: Aug 2006
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kelmo
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8797
posted
I can say that my daughter had nightmares and terrors years before, and currently, during treatment.
She once had a dream that she took a knife to her own body. She woke up covered in blood, and it was a bloody nose. Freaked her out!
She takes much of the medication you take. I really think it's part of the disease.
We pray in her room every night for sweet dreams and no fear. It works! If we neglect to pray, she has the nightmares. Call it what you will, we just do what works, right?
posted
thanks for the help, i will talk to my LLMD appt coming up. good to know I m not losing my mind. I have so many in one night!! yikes! i hate them! I hope they go away too Kristin Posts: 225 | From home | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
Hi, I'm glad you brought this topic up. I have been going to post about how my dreams have changed but I thought it was just me and not Lyme related.
I have been on Doxy for about 2 1/2 months and the past month or so I have seen a change in my dreams.
My dreams have always been a kind of refuge. It is like I live another life but one free of pain, fatigue and anxiety. I would dream of places and people that were pleasant.
But the past month that has changed. Now my dreams have taken on a more violent flavor. Not really nightmares....yet....but I am wondering if that is to come.
Is it the spirochetes moving about in the brain? Die off? I guess I can take a time period of bad dreams if I knew it was from die off and that it will pass and be all better.
I'm sorry you are having such terrible nightmares. I only hope it is from die off and soon you will be better.
-------------------- Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired Posts: 185 | From Colorado | Registered: Sep 2006
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kelmo
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8797
posted
My brother in law was a pharmaceutical sales rep. He gave us samples of Cipro and Avalox. We had cases of Cipro and didn't have a use for them. DANG...wish we had them now. They expired seven years ago.
Anyway, she tried Avalox for a bad sinus infection. It was a new drug and he said it would work for her.
She saw rats with red eyes crawling around her room!
We found out later that Avalox can cause hallucinations.
They're not abx-related because the nightmares were how it all really started (along with sleep disturbance).
What would happen was I would have the most appalling, violent, vivid nightmare, then wake up in the middle of the night and I'd have gone deaf in one ear and very loud tinnitus.l
The worse the nightmare, the worse the deafness.
One time, I took a dose of Diflucan (this is well before i knew anything about lyme) and I slept brilliantly... and when I woke the tinnitus was gone. I felt absolutely wonderful and rang everyone to tell them I was "cured".
But it only worked once. And the tinnitus slowly came back 3 hrs after I got up.
Now the nightmares are permanent, every single night. Some a little worse than others admittedly. I HATE bedtime.
Oh, and Doxycycline makes my hearing much much worse. I've managed a week of it, can't stand it any more, so taking a break.
Someone with incredibly similar symptoms to mine has told me recently that their nightmares stopped within a WEEK of taking Mepron & Zith.
P
Posts: 19 | From London | Registered: Dec 2006
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Aniek
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Member # 5374
posted
Do you take any anti-inflammatories? I had anxiety dreams every night I was on Vioxx. They stopped the day I stopped taking Vioxx.
I have wondered if the dreams were my body sending me a message that I was putting something toxic in my system. Especially since Vioxx can affect the heart.
Maybe nightmares/anxiety dreams can be the sign of a change in the way the heart is working? I know this sounds kind of out there, but it makes sense to me. The body would be anxious if there is something happening to the heart. Vioxx affects the heart.
-------------------- "When there is pain, there are no words." - Toni Morrison Posts: 4711 | From Washington, DC | Registered: Mar 2004
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hardynaka
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8099
posted
In my worst weeks/ months with lyme and babesia, I had those awful night terrors EVERYTIME I stopped Buhner's herbs. Impossible to sleep, literally. I guessed I got some minutes of sleep a night, but could I call that sleeping? Or torture?
I stopped herbs before going to the ducks, so that something could show up in my blood exams, I believed. Nope, didn't work to get a treatment nor any diagnosis. I just got insomnia!
Back to herbs, back to sleeping like a baby in very little time (few days). Never dropped the herbs since, got my normal dreams back in the end (after months and months), now I think I'm normal !!!
During my bad lyme days, even with herbs, I had the impression I had zero dreams. Better that than night terrors!
Selma
Posts: 1086 | From Switzerland | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Try putting 2 -3 drops of Lavender essential oil onto a tissue and under your pillowcase. This helped to take my nightmares away. I had been having them for 6 - 8 weeks.
Posts: 117 | From . | Registered: Oct 2006
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posted
iam so sorry that you too suffer from night terrors, hope it helps to know you are not crazy though. like any of us needs something else to rob us of our sleep, right?
in the odd event that i actually sleep for more than 45 min. a night, (never sleep due to pain and the dr. said my seratonin level was off the charts high)i will have very vivid graphic night terrors, where you wake up doing that catch your breath thing like you have been crying really hard for hours, but i havent, they are awful.
i also realized my 15 yr. old son who also suffers from severe lyme, has them, when he woke up the other morning and said mom, i feel really good, i did not dream last night at all. after some talking, he said he had been having night terrors off and on for a while.
wishing all of us a peaceful night of great sleep!
-------------------- (((HUGS!!!))),daphne Posts: 232 | From ft. worth, texas, | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I had a few days of intense nightmares with the initial herxing (mino). They cleared as all the other herxing cleared.
Posts: 169 | From former Philadelphian | Registered: Jun 2006
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savebabe
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Member # 9847
posted
I can totally understand what you are going through. Effexor was the drug that gave me horrible, vivid dreams. I still have sleep problems but now I think they are all from PTSD.
Posts: 1603 | From ny | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
My LLMD just added klonopin to my sleeping meds as I have only been getting 4-5 hours sleep for months now. After two nights on klonopin, and two nights (and a daytime nap) of wild-as-heck nightmares, just like you described, I have to conclude it is the klonopin for me.
monkeyshines
Posts: 343 | From Northern VA | Registered: Oct 2004
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CaliforniaLyme
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 7136
posted
For me violent nightmares are Babs or Babs Herxing!!
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
All truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer Posts: 5639 | From Aptos CA USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
vivid dreaming is seen in both CNS lyme encephalopathy and babesia...actually also in relapsing fever.
I have a big history of vivid dreaming including acting out dreams in my sleep, I've broken things and hurt myself.
In more general terms, vivid dreaming with recall {as opposed to most dreams which are forgotten when in the conscious state} can be a sign of organic delirium due to diffuse brain pathology.
Posts: 523 | From Stillwater,OK,USA | Registered: Sep 2004
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I was just rx'd oxycodone/acet yesterday in an attempt to handle my pain. I'm always leary of new drugs but took it last night.
I started a small lyme rage about an hour afterwards. I never had that before.
Woke up this morning at 5am and hurt like heck. So I took another one, intending to sleep for another hour or so.
I ended up sleeping for 5 hours and had the most unsettling dream and it just went on and on.
I too look forward to sleeping so I can dream as I'm normal in my dreams w/no illness.
But this one, well, it was so scary. Part of it was lyme related. I saw a small bump on my leg so I pinched it and it opened up. It was layers and layers of red tissue all mangled up. Then, a portion of it starting oozing out of my body into a 6 inch high lump of flesh. Like my tissue was exploding out of my leg. I tried to shove it back in but it wouldn't go back.
Thank God I woke up and when I did, I grabbed for my leg to see if the oozing was still happening. Then I realized it was a dream.
I don't think I'll be taking anymore of that pain med. Posts: 867 | From PA | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
I dealt with this very unpleasant symptom as well. I had terrible nightmares, and I MEAN TERRIBLE! I found out later that this is often associated with Nuero-Lyme and when the dreams get worse, it is because there is a die off in the brain. It WILL go away, just hang in there.
canefan17
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 22149
posted
Bump
the nightmares I have make me think I have babs underneath it all - but I don't really show al ot of babs symptoms... hmmmm
Posts: 5394 | From Houston, Tx | Registered: Aug 2009
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