I was working in public safety. I was a Lieutenant with the Miami Beach Fire Department, Ocean Rescue Division. I supervised several – about a dozen men in my zone during the day, and I'd have to deal with them on a daily basis. And I had very little patience because of lack of sleep. Also, I found myself dozing off, so I would have to get out of my vehicle or my office and start walking, take showers – these are ways that I handled my sleep disorder. It felt like – it operated like this. I would be tired, I would crawl into bed, and maybe for the first half hour, nothing would occur. …in my mind, I knew it was coming. It was like a train in the distance. It was far off, but you could hear it getting closer and closer. And then, all of a sudden, my legs would start – I could feel the intensity starting in my legs, until they would just explode like, I told you, electric eels. The shock would be so minimal at first that it would build up and then, uncontrollably, blast them. My legs would jump. It was so uncomfortable. And I sat up and I said, "This is it. I can't – I won't sleep tonight." I couldn't sleep at night, so I worked at night. I met a nurse there, and she said, "Geez, why don't you try the sleep clinic?" And I looked at her, and I said to myself, "Why didn't I think of that?" For some reason, in my mind, I knew this was the solution. And sure enough, when I went there, I spent my night there, thrashing around like I normally do; I woke up; the doctor walked in, "You've got RLS." It was like a renewed life for me.
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My husband and I would share and talk about, you know, what was happening. And he was aware of the jerkiness in my legs and the kicking at him and this sort of thing [CHUCKLE]. And so we had no problem discussing it at all. ...when I was trying to go to sleep at night, when I would be in bed. I couldn't lay still, my legs wanted wiggle, they felt like they were ... almost like I wanted to take them off. If there was any way, I would just dissociate my body from them. The other symptoms would happen usually in the evening... sometimes during the day, but usually during the evening. If I would be reading or sitting in a concert where I couldn't move my feet or my legs and I would feel like I needed to move. If I was reading, I couldn't stay reading. I had to stand up, I had to walk around, I couldn't enjoy sitting and reading a book. I have had the symptoms for probably, I'd say four or five years at least before I saw the doctor. And I saw the doctor three and a half years ago. When I found out that there was a name, that it actually had something to describe it, that other people had it, it wasn't just insomnia or just me, I was more excited about the fact that there was something that could be done about it. Now that I'm on the MIRAPEX, I'm sleeping better, so I'm able to do more during the day. I'm getting a more restful night's sleep. But some of the things that I can do now, and enjoy doing, are like going to a concert because I can get the relief I need, relax and enjoy the concert, not feel like I want to get up, I want to scream, I can't stand sitting here any longer. I want to avoid this situation, you know, in the future. Instead I can take the MIRAPEX, get the relief I need...
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I've had symptoms since childhood, and as an adult I just started realizing that I wasn't getting any rest. I'd wake up in the morning and there would be literally no bedclothes on the bed. These symptoms got so bad that I wasn't getting any sleep. It started to cause problems on the job. And I sought medical help. But I've been overweight all my life, so just... everybody just kind of chalked it up to that: "Well if you'd lose weight you wouldn't be so tired." I was told, "You're lazy, you're irresponsible, you're overweight." ...some people describe it as creepy-crawly sensations or like worms crawling deep down in their veins — not on the surface, but way deep down. ...there's a lot of names for it and people feel that sensation in different ways. I had a very sedentary job and it would get harder and harder for me to sit still all day. And the RLS would have affected any job because I started to have tardiness problems and I couldn't get up in the mornings. I did start to reject social events. I still went to church. I found that if I took sermon notes that helped because I was moving a little bit. But it still didn't take the urge to move completely away. I didn't go to movies. If friends asked me to go see a movie or something I would try to change it and either say, well, why don't you just come over to my house and we'll watch a video? So that way I would feel more free to move around. I felt so relieved when I finally had a diagnosis. I mean for nine years, people had been trying to convince me that there was nothing wrong or, even worse, that it was a mental illness instead of a physical problem. Oh, I'm on MIRAPEX right now. It was a miracle drug for me. My! It worked better than anything I had tried in the past and now I can function.
Hear from a patient's partner »
Well, Sherry and I have been married for fifteen years now. Before we were married, we dated for five or six years and at that time, we knew there was something wrong with her but we didn't know what it was. She would wake up in the morning exhausted. The bedclothes would be off the bed. She would be so tired she couldn't get to work. ...she'd been to doctor after doctor after doctor trying to find out what her problem was. And no one could really give her an answer. She was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. She was diagnosed with nighttime seizures. But nobody really understood what her problem was. ...she went to see a sleep physician and had an overnight sleep study done. ...she was near tears, until the doctor told her, "You have a serious medical problem. And it's real. And your problem is restless leg syndrome." And at this point in time, this was the first we'd ever heard of restless leg syndrome. But now, after spending nine years of going from doctor to doctor trying to find out what was the matter with her, she finally had a name for the problem. Since Sherry's been taking MIRAPEX, she's been able to function pretty much during the day. She's able to control her symptoms or alleviate them to a great extent during the evening and she's able to get several good hours of sleep at night, to the point that when she wakes up in the morning she's able to do what she wants to do.
