We were eating our dinner on trays while watching the TV and I was aware that my husband had stopped eating. His eyes were shut. He appeared to be unconscious.
“Are you alright?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t dead. A flicker of life showed on his face.
“Uh? Oh! I forgot about dinner,” he said, picked up his cutlery, and started eating again. “I didn’t sleep well last night”.
We were supposed to be embarking on a two-hour drive that evening, so I thought perhaps we should leave earlier than planned. I didn’t want him to fall asleep at the wheel.
I asked him if he needed to sleep before we left, so he didn’t fall asleep in the car. He declined, saying he didn’t think he was that tired, but we thought leaving earlier than planned might not be a bad idea.
Is this something that happens as you age? He’s 65 next year and is certainly having a lot of old man problems in his senior years. Falling asleep in the middle of doing something is the latest in a series of unexpected incidences.
It doesn’t happen a lot, or I’d wonder if he had narcolepsy.
He also has the strangest night-time adventures. He was put on a drug for his backache, which made him lash out at night. One night he picked me up by my hair at 3 am while I was sleeping (and so was he)! It hurt and was a frightening way to be woken up!
He came off the drugs after that, because his dreams seemed to be increasingly violent and the drugs weren’t helping his back problems. He was unknowingly lashing out and attacking me in his sleep on a nightly basis.
He’s been off the drugs for a few years now, but he still has weird dreams and weird behaviours while he’s asleep. These days he’s usually laughing his head off while he’s asleep, which is far preferable and a lot less painful for me.
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