Kyle, 

Closest thing I've heard of to what you're experiencing was my brother,
who was diagnosed with sleep apnea.  When he'd try to wake up in the
morning, it was almost impossible, because he was waking up every couple
of minutes throughout the night, although not for long enough that he
was actually aware of it.  He didn't talk about dreams of the type you
did, but he did talk about dreams of swimming under water and not being
able to reach the surface.  His doc prescribed a CPAP machine, because
he was waking up because his breathing would stop.  I guess CPAP
machines force the user to breathe, even though they may "forget" to on
their own.  He has no apparent disabilities.  The sleep apnea was
diagnosed by having him spend the night in a sleep lab where he was
closely monitored (EEG, EEG, videotape, etc.).


Kendall 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Cleveland, Kyle E. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 1:19 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: A strange problem...

Here's a question for the group:

Anyone ever have dreams where you know you're asleep, you know exactly
what
sleeping position you're in, you're aware of the environment, yet you
can't
wake up?  I've been experiencing this on an ever-increasing basis, and
now
it's to the point where it's happening almost every night.  I'm only
getting
a few hours of sleep.  Sometimes I will dream that I've actually started
to
wake up and then I get frustrated because I realized that I DREAMED I
was
waking up!  Rousing myself out of these dreams takes incredible physical
and
mental effort--the best analogy I can come up with is it feels like I'm
lifting a car off my chest or sinking in quicksand.  Some of the time,
the
effort is too great and I feel myself actually "falling" back to sleep.
I
rest a while, then try it again.  Scares the bejabbers out of me!  This
sound familiar?

Kyle