Nightmare finally ends for St. Cloud teacher cured of rare sleep disorder
As a girl, Michelle Heizelman developed an elaborate ritual to fend off the flesh-eating monsters that haunted her dreams.
Each night, she would carefully arrange her stuffed animals and dolls in a circle around her body, and then curl into a fetal position. “My desperate hope was the monsters in my nightmares would eat the animals first and leave me alone,” Heizelman said.
But the nightmares persisted. Night after night, she imagined monsters crawling under her bed and groping at her limbs. At times, she imagined the walls of her bedroom dripping with blood and the shag of her carpet turning into dozens of outstretched hands. Eventually doctors diagnosed Heizelman with a rare and sometimes debilitating condition known as “nightmare disorder,” defined by frequent, extremely vivid dreams that usually involve threats to one’s survival.
Then came a miracle: On Dec. 28, 2016, Heizelman slept through the night without a single nightmare. It marked the first time in 40 years that she awoke without feeling distressed and fatigued.
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For a while, doctors encouraged Heizelman to try a technique known as imagery rehearsal therapy, in which she would “rescript” her dreams by writing them out on paper but converting the distressing endings to something happier. She filled entire notebooks with rescripted dreams, turning violent car crashes into near misses and transforming demonic monsters into popular cartoon characters from her childhood.
Still the nightmares continued. In one recurring dream, the dismembered bodies of her family would emerge from a crashed plane and chase her through the burning wreckage. The nightly horrors and anxiety-filled awakenings became so unmanageable that Heizelman quit a job she loved as a special education teacher after eight years and began having thoughts of suicide. Heizelman even visited a psychic, who suggested she was channeling images of the “coming end of the world,” she said.
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Finally, nearly two years after Heizelman walked through HCMC’s front door, her treatment team finally had a breakthrough. Varghese had discovered a study showing that a little-known allergy medication, cyproheptadine, helped people relax and prevented nightmares. He discussed the study with the treatment team and they unanimously recommended she try the drug.... The effect was immediate. On the first night after taking the medication, she had a pleasant dream of walking through a shopping mall without being chased or threatened. The next night, she dreamed of picking flowers.
http://www.startribune.com/the-nightmare-has-finally-ended-for-a-st-cloud-schoolteacher-cured-of-a-rare-sleep-disorder/428732063/
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