Bleargh. Braaiiiiiins (and shoulders).

It's 3 in the morning and I am wide awake. And grumpy.

I can't sleep because of being so ridiculously wide awake, which I think is making up for the night before. Last night I slept like the dead. Literally.

I slept much more soundly than I usually do, and during the few times that I woke, I was so very sleepy and muzzy and out of it I felt almost drugged, zombie-like. I was slow and extremely clumsy in my movements, to the point that my balance was so badly off I had to be very careful walking to and from the bathroom, and kept running into and banging into things. Blinking was not a quick matter - my eyes kept wanting to stay closed, even as I was up and walking. Despite such good, deep sleep, I slept in until almost noon yesterday, and that's despite having gotten to bed at a very reasonable hour. When I finally got up around noonish (because I really felt absurd sleeping that long, not because I couldn't sleep anymore) I was still fuzzy and zombie-like, scraping my chin across the edge of the bookshelf next to my bed and my back and shoulder against the bathroom door handle when I bent down to gather clothes off the floor to wash them. My balance was still badly off, and I remained in this alarmingly sluggish state until I dragged myself down to the gas station at the bottom of our road and got an energy drink. All was well then, but I'm still sort of weirded out by the whole thing.

This has happened before, several times, all within the last few months, and I hate it every time, feeling clumsy and weak and out of it. This was the worst experience of it, and I really really don't like it. It scares me that I can be that out of it. It truly felt like I was drugged - like when you start to wake up from anesthesia.

Tonight's (and into this morning's) total and complete inabaility to sleep must be making up for it. I'm tired. I want to sleep. I just can't.

On top of being so awake I'm also dealing with another thing that has me weirded out and I think on Monday I'm finally going to call my doctor about it.

All my life, I've been a side-sleeper. Doesn't matter which side (although my right side seems to be even more comfortable), but I can only easily sleep on my side. Sleeping on my back has always been very hard to do (I just can't get comfortable), and remains so to this day. Forget about sleeping on my stomach. Way too uncomfortable.

For the last three or four months, I've been having strange shoulder pains, and it feels like they are slightly dislocated. What really grosses me out is that if I shift a bit while on my side, whatever shoulder I'm sleeping on will actually pull partially out of socket with a pop and a slide. I can alwasy just shift back and pop it back in, but it freaks me out, and over the months it has begun to cause pain in whatever shoulder I slept on during the day. Now it hurts after just a few minutes of lying on my side.

I have tried (and tried, and tried) to train myself to sleep on my back because of this, putting a pillow under my knees for proper back alignment.

I can't sleep on my back. I just end up twitching, shifting my arms and legs this way and that and back again, turning my head from one side to the other and back, trying to fool my body into thinking it's on it's side my turning just my hips to the side a little, and all to no avail. It is not comfortable, and I cannot sleep.

Now I can't sleep on my side either, because it hurts my shoulders too much.

What other sleeping positions are there to try? I guess I could prop myself up in a sitting position on the couch, but I bet that's all kinds of bad for the back, neck, and shoulders, too.

So, I can't sleep because I don't like pain. Even sitting here, a good fifteen minutes after having given up on sleeping, my shoulders hurt, and make sickening popping and grinding sounds when I move them, as if they are still just ever so slightly out of socket.

I'm beyond frustrated. It seems the only good (and pain free) sleep I can get now is the totally random zombie-sleep that freaks me out and leaves me in a bad mood because it's so damned freaky and I don't know what causes it. The rest of the time, I'm tossing and turning, trying to force myself to sleep on my back and giving up and just trying to ignore the shoulder pain so I can just sleep.

I have pored over everything I can find on the internet about sleeping positions and shoulder pain and all I can find is dozens of conflicting bits of advice about how to sleep to prevent back pain (and my back is perfectly fine), or the obvious advice to not sleep on an injured shoulder. But unless simply sleeping on them for 27 years can injure your shoulders, mine aren't injured. No matter my search terms, no matter what medical websites I try, there is absolutely nothing connecting sleeping position with shoulder pain and slight dislocation.

So I get to go back to the doctor I don't trust or respect (or like, the ignorant bitch) because I have so far been unable to find another doctor taking new patients, and see what she has to say about both the zombie-sleep and the shoulder pain. And I hope to god she actually listens to what I'm saying instead of hurrying me along, asking about my GERD (which I've never had, bitch, it's Gastritis) and what birth control I'm on now (the same one I've been on for several years now, look at the chart you're holding in your hands, dumbass) and generally just not doing anything at all to give me any faith in her as a doctor. If I'm lucky at least one of the two issues might be resolved, at least partially.

I think if I can figure out what's going on with my shoulders and fix that, the better sleep may well prevent the random zombie-sleep and the frazzled, muzzy, drugged feeling I get afterwards.

Cross your fingers for me, k?

And give me your braaaaaiiiiins ...