Living with REM Behavior Disorder

I have been married for 15 years and within the first month of marraige, realized we needed to buy a king size bed. My husbands constant snoring, twitching, moving, and jerking progressed into bigger scarrier movements. It is comforting to finally read on sleepchannel that I was not the only person dealing with these issues, and there is a name for the problem, (RBD) REM Behavior Disorder. Maybe now we can see about getting some help, and then I will get a better nights sleep.
Once during a normal night sleep, I was cuddled under his arm on his side. Suddenly, I was startled into conscienceness! In the blackness of my sleep, I saw white stars twinking as my head felt a big pain! It was like a cartoon when they get hit in the head and they see stars. It really happens, and it happened to me! I screamed, and asked him what he was doing, he said he was dreaming that he was a professional wrestler and was “pile driving a wrestler in the head”, but instead he had pile driven my head hard!!!
Another instance of RBD happened when I was sleeping on my stomach. I awoke to a pain across my back and a hard thump sound of him hitting me. My husbands hands were interlocked like holding a golf club. I woke him up and asked what he was doing and he said he was hitting a home run with a bat, he had been playing baseball.
Another time I awoke to him kicking my feet and legs extreamly hard with his. When I woke him and asked him what he was doing, he said he was killing rattle snakes by stomping on them.
The last one I will tell you about is when our faces were close and facing each other. I awoke to him somewhat arguing with someone, he was mumbling strongly. I could tell it was not right. I moved quickly from the position I was in away from him, and shortly after I did that he reached out and hit the pillow where my head was. Needless to say, we now sleep with a large body pillow between us in our large king size bed. That seems to help. If he begins to push or kick, he gets the pillow and not me!!! Maybe that trick will help some others while you are getting medical help.
Thanks to the great information in the article we have some great tools and information on how to get help and treatment!