My Fortuitous Introduction to RLS

I cannot remember the exact day or month when it first happened. Initially, it began with my husband complaining about how much I was wriggling around in bed.

When you wake up to a bleary-eyed partner day after day, nicknaming your nighttime antics as "The Dark Riverdance," you begin searching the internet for your symptoms.

Search results gave my symptoms a name

"Creepy feeling in my legs." "Overwhelming urge to move my limbs." Within those 2 statements, the words restless legs syndrome (RLS) were thrown back at me.

Sitting there reading this list of symptoms in my head, mentally ticking most of them off, the time had come to make a doctor's appointment. This was in 2011. I have been dealing with nighttime roaming for 9 years now. RLS systematically tore my life apart, one piece at a time.

The negative impact of RLS

The destruction RLS inflicts on your relationship starts with the uncontrollable moving of your legs at night, flailing around, kicking, and bruising your bedmate, with no knowledge. It ends with separate bedrooms.

Spending hour after hour pacing round the house, as when you stop, the creeping starts. On a really bad day, your arms get in on the action too. You end up looking like an inflatable wavy arm dude at an American car lot!

What causes RLS?

Restless legs syndrome has no exact known cause. Researchers have found genes related to RLS that can run in families. For many people, RLS symptoms start before the age of 40.¹

Research also suggests that RLS is related to a problem with the basal ganglia within the brain. The basal ganglia uses dopamine to control muscle activity and movement. If nerve cells become damaged, less available dopamine may cause involuntary movements and muscle spasms. Since dopamine levels naturally drop towards the end of the day, this may explain why symptoms are often worse during the evening and night.¹

Knowing how my condition started made me feel so much better, realising it wasn't just me imagining things gave me so much relief. Although, unfortunately, that relief didn't extend to my RLS!

Evening dread and RLS

As evening sets in, sitting on the sofa minding your own business, watching some mind-numbingly boring television programme, you can feel RLS creeping up like an unwanted visitor. You know the one, the one who talks through the entire programme, even though you aren't listening.

You try and ignore it, hoping that maybe, just this once, if you try hard enough, it might just go away! Then you feel your legs tingle, the precursor to a horrid night, then the nighttime tango commences.

RLS is a sleep thief

At its worst, awake all night, hitting the muscles in my calves to try and get some sort of relief, I curse this condition.

RLS, those 3 letters.

Restless legs syndrome, these 5 syllables.

They have taken more sleep from me than my 3 children ever did when they were babies. It has caused me more frustration than a deadline ever has.

We have each other

Please share your stories with me, with us. Share your frustrations, your thoughts, your laughter, because if RLS has taken our sleep, it cannot take our giggles!! (In the style of Mel Gibson in Braveheart!)

How did you discover you had restless legs syndrome? Do you experience evening dread and sleepless nights too? Share your story with our community.