How Does This Doctor Sleep At Night?

I’ve had sleep problems for my entire life, taking multiple hours and often tears in order to fall asleep every night.

Finally, when I am sixteen and starting to have trouble staying asleep, as well, a teacher of mine convinces my mother to take me to a doctor about it. I have social anxiety and am already an avid reader of this site, so I am nervous going in. I’ve only been to this doctor a few times before, but he is very nice so I am able to convince myself everything will be perfectly fine.

Then, we get to the office only to find out that my doctor isn’t in, and his colleague will be seeing me instead. Slight panic, but nothing too bad yet. I go into the exam room and explain that I’m there to get a reference to a sleep specialist. Easy enough, right? Well, she needs to go through all the exam steps first, but that’s easy. We start off normally, going through my symptoms and then my family history. When she gets to my father’s side, I explain that my mother is single and had me through a sperm bank, so I haven’t the faintest about his medical history. Suddenly, her body language closes off and I start to panic a bit about having said something wrong.

She starts asking more and more questions about my problems staying asleep, which mostly involves waking up long enough to roll over before falling back asleep. I keep reiterating that my real problem is taking no less than an hour to fall asleep every night, which she keeps brushing off. Anxiety levels rising.

Doctor: “Drink some lavender tea and read before bed.”

She says it like that is somehow helpful (and like I haven’t already tried that).

Eventually, she turns to me, places a hand on my knee, and says in the most condescending tone of voice that I’ve heard before or since:

Doctor: “Are sure the problem isn’t that you’re depressed because you have no father figure?”

I kind of blue-screened for a minute, because… what? I managed to stammer out something that I’m pretty sure was a denial, but by that point, I just wanted to get this appointment over with.

She continued talking over me, not listening to what I had to say, and generally being condescending for the rest of the conversation, which my brain has conveniently blurred from my memory. It’s bad enough that I had to fight down tears (I was a bit of a crier).

Unfortunately, she noticed and tried to “comfort” me by saying she knew how hard it was to confront mental issues. She also declared that I had depression, restless leg syndrome, and also probably sleep apnea, which is why I kept waking up (completely glossing over the not-falling-asleep thing, again). I was advised to get treatment “before I died in my sleep,” which is not a reassuring thing to say to anyone. She did write me a reference to an actual sleep doctor, though.

I managed to hold myself together long enough to make it back to my mother’s car, where I proceeded to cry and possibly have an anxiety attack about all that. Thankfully, my next appointment that day was with my therapist, so that all got worked out pretty quickly.

Oh, and when I went to the sleep doctor? I was pretty much immediately diagnosed with a delayed circadian rhythm, likely at least partially due to some medical malpractice that occurred in my infancy. The waking up was likely caused by my body thinking I was just trying to take a nap, apparently. No restless legs, and certainly no sleep apnea. The doctor advised me to take some melatonin and get a job on the night shift once I was old enough.

I now actually get to sleep relatively quickly, and the day after getting my first full night’s sleep was practically life-changing. Who knew it was possible to be energetic and not constantly tired? I guess it all worked out all right in the end, though that lady still makes me nervous about going to new doctors.