From the Nest — August 12, 2026 Issue

Welcome back to the ongoing, unscripted, occasionally alarming series we like to call our life. This episode: Rob moonlights as a stuntman in his sleep, I moonlight as his security detail, and neither of us gets a paycheck or a full night's rest. Grab your coffee. Here's what's actually going on.

Rob's Corner

The combination of RBD and Parkinsonism has a bigger effect on my daily function than most people realize.

At night, the RBD means I don't stay still during dream sleep. I act out the dreams, kicking, thrashing, sometimes yelling or trying to get out of bed. These are not minor movements. They can be strong enough that Heather has to stay aware and protect both of us. I usually have no memory of the episodes. I find out the next morning when Heather tells me what happened, or when I see the evidence in the room. That part is disorienting in its own way, knowing something physical and potentially dangerous occurred while I was completely unaware.

At the same time, the Parkinsonism makes it harder to turn over or get comfortable. Stiffness and tremor interfere with falling asleep and staying asleep. The result is sleep that is broken and not restorative, even when I am in bed for a full night.

That carries straight into the next day. Motor symptoms are worse. Tremor, coordination, and balance all feel harder to manage. The asymmetric problems I already deal with become more noticeable. Mentally I am foggy and have less patience. Energy for anything useful, whether it is golf, writing, or basic tasks, drops. One poor night often costs more than a single day. It can take additional time to get back to a functional baseline.

Heather absorbs the secondary effects. She loses sleep because she has to stay alert, and over time that creates its own strain. What should be rest for both of us becomes another source of fatigue and tension in the house.

I wish it were ordinary tiredness, but it is a repeating cycle where disrupted sleep amplifies the Parkinsonism and reduces my capacity across the board. Any honest look at how I am functioning day to day has to include what RBD and the Parkinsonism are doing to my nights.

—Rob

Heather's Translation

I haven't slept through the night in years, and somewhere along the way I just adjusted, the way you adjust to a car alarm in the neighborhood you eventually stop hearing. I developed a sixth sense for telling a bathroom trip from something else, which is not a skill I ever asked for and definitely isn't on my resume.

Then there are the other nights. The chaos ones. He never remembers a single second of those, which honestly feels a little unfair given that I remember all of it in high definition.

I've caught him mid-fall out of bed. Zero memory on his end. I've woken up to him standing over me, fully mid-conversation, and I'm the only one in the room who knows the conversation is happening. Sometimes he's back on duty, protecting us from a threat that exists nowhere except in his dream. Add in the pain, the tossing, the turning, the snoring, and it's a genuine miracle either of us functions the next day. He gets the worse end of that deal, for what it's worth.

It's oddly familiar. It's the newborn-baby kind of exhausted, where some part of you stays on night shift even while the rest of you is asleep. I used to know our kids were hungry before they made a sound. Now I know when he's about to hit the floor.

We put an alarm on our bedroom door. Not because we're fancy, because the alternative is Rob narrating an action movie in the neighbor's backyard at 3am, and we have already had that rehearsal, we do not need a sequel.

Here's the detail that actually gets me every time. In a normal dream, your body is supposed to go still, like it's been benched. His never does. So what I'm watching isn't a dream playing out somewhere safely behind his eyes. It's a live performance, happening in our bedroom, while I am doing my best impression of a functioning adult at three in the morning. By sunrise it's gone for him, wiped clean. For me, it's all still there. Every scene. No editing.

—Heather

The Research

People with Parkinson's disease are far more likely to have had RBD symptoms beforehand. One case-control study found the odds ratio for having a prior history of RBD-compatible symptoms was 12.09 in favor of Parkinson's cases over matched controls (Fernandes et al., "History of symptoms consistent with REM sleep behavior disorder in a population with Parkinson's Disease," Sleep Medicine, 2024).

That's part of why sleep specialists want RBD raised with a doctor by name, on its own, not folded into a longer conversation about something else. It's one of the clearest early signals researchers currently have.

Watch

REM Sleep Behavior Disorder and Parkinson's (The Research Behind It) Rob's account of what these nights actually look like, and what the research says about why they matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSc_Mk3oBO8​

Parkinson's Sleep Problems and REM Sleep Behavior Disorder Explained The full clinical picture, for anyone who wants the mechanism behind the mayhem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vRGNnmsIhY​

One Resource

If you're the one lying awake tracking symptoms, timelines, and the small details that seem unrelated until a doctor connects them, that's exactly what the Caregiver's Medical Binder is built for.

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