For 15 years, a 77-year-old woman dreaded falling asleep. Every night, just as she began to drift off, she felt what she described as a painless sledgehammer banging in her brain, a jolt that shocked her awake and left her anxious.
Her workaround was to stay awake until she was so exhausted that the sledgehammer could no longer wake her. By the time she sought help for severe insomnia, she usually did not fall asleep until 4 a.m.
