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RBD Is Killing Me and Potentially My Wife!

by Bob
(Hilton Head SC)

I'm almost age 70. I'm a retired business executive who used to have a very stressful job. Every night, I dream. Sometimes my dreams are about unimaginably horrible things and acts, sometimes they are sexually exciting but weird since I'm having sex with multiple partners, and sometimes I'm literally conducting business meetings, yelling out instructions or holding complicated strategy sessions. Sometimes I'm fighting with my father.


When I dream of bad things or people which are trying to hurt me, I lash out with my legs to kick back and find that I'm kicking my wife! A couple times, I have thrown myself out of bed fighting the bad guys!

My wife tells me that I talk and yell every night and she's reluctant to go to a hotel because of this. I've frequently moved to a guest bedroom so as not to disturb (or hurt) my wife. I wake up exhausted feeling like I haven't slept.

I've had depression and anxiety for over 20 years, but it's now very mild. I've taken practically every known antidepressant. I'm currently only taking Cymbalta, but since I've read that it can cause RBD, I've cut back to 30 mg. from 120 mg. over the last few months. A month ago I started taking Deplin, a type of folic acid derivative, which has helped my mood. I exercise daily, but still weigh about 225, which, since I'm 6'3", is still about 10% overweight. I drink quite a bit of alcohol, like a bottle of wine or 2-3 cocktails every night. I've tried to stop drinking to see if the RBD goes away, but it doesn't. A while back, I took Lunesta but stopped because it stopped working.

I took a sleep test back in the mid 90's which indicated that I had many sleep interruptions due in part to nasal constriction, so I had a septoplasty and uvalectomy, neither of which did anything to stop my snoring. I still have nasal constriction as soon as I lie down and use a spray to help clear my nasal passages nightly.

This RBD is a terrible thing to have to live with. I plan to schedule another sleep lab test to see what can be done about it. My internist has not taken this seriously!!

Bob

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