After a crash, many people notice their sleep changing before they notice anything else. Some sleep far more than usual in the first days. Others lie awake, or wake at the same hour each morning with a feeling they cannot quite name. Sleep is easy to leave out of an exam because it happens when no one is watching, and it rarely feels like a symptom at all.
This piece is educational. It does not explain what a change in sleep means for you, and it is not a diagnosis. It offers a simple way to write down what you already notice, so that when you sit down for an exam you can describe it clearly instead of guessing at the details on the spot.
What to write each night
Keep a small notebook or a note on your phone beside the bed. Each evening, write the time you went to bed and a rough sense of how long it took you to fall asleep. In the morning, write the time you woke, whether you woke once or several times, and how rested you felt. Use your own plain words, such as heavy, okay, or clear. Good entries are specific enough that you could read them a week later and know exactly what happened.
Note anything from the hours before sleep that stands out: a screen you used late, a heavy meal, a long drive, a conversation that stayed with you. You are not searching for a cause. You are adding context so that the entries make sense later, both to you and to the person reviewing them.
Noticing the daytime side
Sleep changes often show up in the afternoon. Write down when you felt the pull to lie down, whether you dozed in a chair or in the car, and roughly how long you were out. If you felt the need for a nap and could not take one, write that too. Record whether you felt groggy after a short sleep or a long one, and whether the grogginess lasted until dinner.
Pay attention to how the day starts as well. Did you wake in the night with tension in your head or neck? Did you wake to the same sound every morning, or to a feeling you could not place? Write the time and what you were doing when you woke. Keep the detail plain and factual, and avoid trying to make every entry sound important. Most useful notes are ordinary.
Bringing the log to your visit
Bring your notes to your appointment and offer to let the examiner read them before you talk about how you feel in general. A week of plain entries is more useful than a summary assembled from memory in the waiting room. Circle anything that surprised you. If a pattern appears, mark it with a line. If nothing changed, write that down as well, because a lack of change is also information.
It helps to know what questions may come up. An examiner may ask whether your sleep changed right after the crash or later on, whether you had similar sleep patterns before the crash, and whether anything now wakes you that did not before. Answer what you can, and say you do not know when that is the honest answer. A clear I do not know is more helpful than a confident guess.
When to seek help right away
Some changes call for emergency care rather than a wait for your next scheduled visit. If someone has trouble waking you, if you feel confused or unusually drowsy and cannot stay alert, or if you notice new weakness, trouble speaking, repeated vomiting, or a headache that is the worst you have ever had, contact emergency services now. A notebook is not the right tool when symptoms are changing quickly.
For everything else, this log is a starting point. It does not replace an examination, and it cannot tell you what is happening in your body. Its purpose is to help you describe the days and nights since the crash accurately, so that your first conversation with an examiner begins from real notes rather than from whatever you happen to remember that morning.