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RP Members check this out - could this be the answer for you and your sleep issues?
Things are different today. Three or four nights a week, after tucking himself in bed, Petrulis slides a prototype 17-pound weighted blanket over his sheets. The blanket is roughly 3 feet wide by 6 feet long, covered in penguin print, and looks a bit like 60 or so 4 x 4 inch bean bags handstitched together. The pockets are each stuffed with polypropylene pellets and a sort of memory foam material.
Petrulis is a big guy—6'2", 250 pounds—but the blanket’s weight spreads evenly over him.
“I feel safer when it’s covering my entire body,” Petrulis explains. No one can bother him this way. “It sets my mind up for sleeping hard that night.”
Which he does.
Andrew Petrulis is finally getting some rest.
For years, he didn’t want to fall asleep. He was out of the war but sleep put him back in it. His dreams replayed scenes from 11 years of active-duty service as a member of a US Air Force explosive ordnance disposal unit. Master Sgt. Petrulis defused roadside bombs and other improvised explosives with a robot, or sometimes his own hands, throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, and Southwest Asia between 2002 and 2013. He received the Bronze Star twice. He shot at people and got blown up. Bombs went off within feet of him. The explosions rattled his brain.
He relived these scenes, over and over, in nightmares.
Things are different today. Three or four nights a week, after tucking himself in bed, Petrulis slides a prototype 17-pound weighted blanket over his sheets. The blanket is roughly 3 feet wide by 6 feet long, covered in penguin print, and looks a bit like 60 or so 4 x 4 inch bean bags handstitched together. The pockets are each stuffed with polypropylene pellets and a sort of memory foam material.
Petrulis is a big guy—6'2", 250 pounds—but the blanket’s weight spreads evenly over him.
“I feel safer when it’s covering my entire body,” Petrulis explains. No one can bother him this way. “It sets my mind up for sleeping hard that night.”
Which he does.
Andrew Petrulis is finally getting some rest.
For years, he didn’t want to fall asleep. He was out of the war but sleep put him back in it. His dreams replayed scenes from 11 years of active-duty service as a member of a US Air Force explosive ordnance disposal unit. Master Sgt. Petrulis defused roadside bombs and other improvised explosives with a robot, or sometimes his own hands, throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, and Southwest Asia between 2002 and 2013. He received the Bronze Star twice. He shot at people and got blown up. Bombs went off within feet of him. The explosions rattled his brain.
He relived these scenes, over and over, in nightmares.
Veterans Are Fighting the War on Sleep
Posted from motherboard.vice.com
Edited 7 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 32
Posted 7 y ago
Thank you COL for the great share. I take a natural sleep med to help me. I use to go to sleep to the sound of the tanks firing on the range.
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CSM Charles Hayden
7 y
COL Mikel J. Burroughs I credit the U S Army with teaching me to take a nap, anywhere, anyplace, especially when I am in a wait state!
(6)
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SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth
7 y
Trees in the field or the seat of the M151 or Humvee wasn't too bad of a spot to catch a snooze.
(2)
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TSgt George Rodriguez
7 y
Sitting on the Paramedic seat on station in the middle of the night. Snoozing, when the onboard computer wakes you up with a sound and lights sending information on your immediate run with the dispatcher reinforcing whats on the screen. Praying that the drunks of the night heed your lights and sirens as your driver gets you to your destination safely. Thanking God for giving you the wisdom and the hands to treat your patient keeping him/her alive until you reach the Emergency Room. The knowledge to understand that what you do you cannot save everyone. The mental capacity to recognize that fact and the ability, no matter how hard it is, especially the children that its Gods will.
(1)
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Posted 7 y ago
Thanks for sharing, a topic close to home here....I will have to check it out as this can really help folks improve their quality of life.
(12)
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