Vivid awakening nightmares, sweating, hot flashes every night

Good morning
I would check with your team as the night sweats could be from an infection. I'm 3 years post transplant and still experience night mares and night sweats. I figure it's a small price to pay for my gift. God bless 🙏

Please check on your blood glucose levels at night. One easy thing to rule out is hypoglycemia.
If you are on a beta blocker, they are known to have a side effect of vivid dreams.
Tacrolimus is known to cause what has been labeled “abnormal dreams” aka nightmares. Lowering to the lowest effective dose may be helpful

Glucose has been fine since drinking a glucose/protein shake before bed. No beta-blockers, but my Tacro increased to 7 because my liver enzymes went up recently. I’ve had no nightmares, just long vivid dreams. I’m still having night sweats randomly which I journal every morning and will be sharing at my next doctor follow up. Have a great weekend

If you are/were on steroids and high dose Tacrolimus, night sweats and nightmares or vivid dreams would need a reassessment with transplant hepatologist after liver enzymes have stabilized. They would more than likely start tapering Tacrolimus dose until reaching a balance stabilizing liver enzymes with lowest effective dose. Hopefully, night sweats and abnormal dreams would improve. Also a good idea to rule out any infection, viral or others.

@mdplastics -7 months post transplant is still pretty early to feel back to yourself. I am 2 years post transplant and I still have fatigue, but I am able to work full time. I take naps on the weekend. I have night sweats all the time, but I kind of always have, there are a quite a bit of side effects from tac. It will get better when it gets reduced and time goes on. I was surprised at how awful I felt the first year. It does get better. With all that said, always tell your transplant team what symptoms you are going through just to be sure there isn’t something else going on. It’s quite a ride.

Im feeling somewhat the same. I was looking for support groups. I ran into your comment and had to reply. Im post op 5 months. Im in Illinois. I hope this finds you well. Blessings to you.

@mdplastics
Congrats on your LT! The symptoms you are experiencing are very uncomfortable - I know bc I have struggled with similar issues. For the first four months, the night sweats were constant. I would wake up drenched and have to change my sheets daily, sometimes even more than that. This has significantly reduced as of today, but still happens occasionally. The liver team watches closely, levels jumped around a bit, but are stable now. They have no explanation for the night sweats, although I wasn't their first patient to experience this. I definitely had PICS as I had a difficult time in my three days in ICU, gratefully that has subsided. Still, a mystery. As a woman post-menopausal, These PLT sweats are much worse than menopause.

I have also experienced significant short-term memory loss issues and brain fog. I am in Northwestern’s (with Penn State and Texas-Austin) post-LT study for exactly this, memory loss post LIVER transplant. This tells me it is certainly a phenomenon that warrants research. If one more person tells me its “old age,” ha! My LT team has been supportive and knows everything I am experiencing. They referred me to and am scheduled soon to see a neuropsychiatrist (whats that, right?) to further investigate this. I am excited and eager to get back to work. I am working part-time and this memory issue is impairing my ability to perform well. As stressful as this particular side effect is, I take it all in stride and am grateful I'm here, on earth, to experience it.

Nightmares? Wow. Yes. Better now, have subsided with the sweats (related?). My team prescribed gabapentin and trazodone and suggested melatonin (not all at once) to help with the sleep disturbances, but all of these made things worse, especially trazadone. I had a sleep study done about 8 -LT, which is wonderfully done at home these days, and the specialist gave me doxepin 6mg. Works very well, and I highly recommend it. Please, consider a sleep study. Easy peasy and very helpful, or, your PCP or liver team can prescribe all said meds and more. It was hard for me to accept I needed help sleeping, but I learned quickly what a gift it is to do on your own, many cannot, and how important sleep is. The brain fog improved greatly once I started sleeping better, however, not the short-term memory issue.

Hang in there, time helps. My story didn't have any jaw-dropping answers, but the work my team and I have accomplished has certainly helped my daily outlook and has brought me some peace and sleep. Now, for the memory to be “fixed,” OR accepting that is where I'm at in life. Either one, I will get there. So will you!

Hi, @greek03. I want to say Welcome to Connect! I'm a 'few' miles away in Central Kentucky and I'm happy that you have joined in the conversation. I am not sure who you were responding to, so I"d like to ask you how you are feeling at 5 months post transplant. What brings you to Connect? What organ have you received?

I'm 7 months post LT this week and I haven't had nightmares or the sweats but boy oh boy do I have hot flashes - they start at my legs and continue up to my head and they are wicked - I never had them this bad going through menopause! My doctors took me off of tacrolimus and started me on cyclosporine which help somewhat with the hot flashes but has really helped with my hair loss- no more falling out in clumps I'm doing low impact water aerobics five days a week and that has helped a lot with the fatigue as I am building my strength back up slowly but surely - good luck

Hi @greek03, I'd like to add my belated welcome to @rosemarya's. I'm confident that @mdplastics appreciated your response about having vivid awakening nightmares. Five months after transplant do these symptoms persist?