Maybe I Could Go Halfsies with Macbeth

[lydy]

Ok. This is the far side of enough. Whatever gods or devils are responsible for my sleep disorders, LAY OFF, ALREADY.

I am in The City, New York City, the town that never sleeps, a city of endless opportunity, a place with museums, shopping, clubs, shows, the best and the worst and the most of everything. So what am I doing? Sleeping. Fucking-A. Frankly, it's going to be embarrassing, going back to work. "So, what did you do over your vacation?" "Oh, you know, slept 12 hours a day, watched "Buffy", that sort of thing."

Getting packed and out of Minneapolis was a nightmare -- maybe I'll tell the story later. When I got to New York, I discovered that amongst the things I'd failed to pack was the power cord for my CPAP. Now, sleep apnea isn't the only sleep disorder I've got, but it is the one that is most easily and completely treatable. All I have to do is blow air up my nose all night long. The machine itself is about the size of a bread box, annoying but not impossibly so. There are battery-powered ones, of course, but I have one of the plain, old, plug-into-the-wall types. Without a plug. This did not start my vacation off very well. I got here on Thursday, and didn't notice that I was missing this vital piece of equipment until late Thursday night. Friday, DDB shipped me the power cord, along with the antidepressant that I'd forgotten (another brilliant move on my part, though not so catastrophic), but the sucker didn't get here until Tuesday. That would be yesterday. We did find a substitute power cord on Sunday, so I have had technologically assisted sleep for 3 days, now. It helps -- but not enough.

I woke up at 11:00 a.m. today. This is a good time to wake up, in my opinion, if one has been up until 2:00 a.m. the night before, as I had. It's a pleasant 9 hour sleep. I don't get nine hours of sleep during my work week, except on very rare exceptions. Weekends, I tend to sleep 12 hours or so, frantically trying to catch up. At this point, though, I really ought to be caught up from whatever sleep depradations I've been suffering. I've been able to sleep as much as I want, and the CPAP should be ensuring that the sleep is real, not faux, sleep. I get up, pour myself a cup of tepid coffee, take 100 mgs of Provigil (twice the dose I'm supposed to take -- oh, Provigil is a wakey-wakey drug for narcoleptics), read my email, and fall asleep. I don't wake up until 1:00 p.m. Again. With 100 mgs. of Provigil in me, it shouldn't be possible to fall asleep like that, dammit.

It just sucks, ok? What portions of my life I'm not moping away I'm sleeping away. Makes a body wonder what value being alive is. Grrr. Teresa, who is a narcoleptic, assures me that this is not natural, and that I need to go back to my doctor and insist on more help. The doctor has told me, repeatedly, in the past, that I just need more sleep than other people, and that if I got 9 hours of sleep a night, things would be fine. Since I don't, falling asleep during the day is one of those things that will happen, and sleeping away my weekends is just a matter of the body trying to catch up. It all made sense, but I'm beginning to doubt it, now. The body can only store up so much sleep dep. You can't be in hock more than a couple of days. By now, I should be out of debt. So why am I still sleeping so much? Why am I still falling asleep when I sit still too long? No fair, no good.

This fine white whine has been brought to you by the Minneapolis Battling Company. We hope you will try our other quality products, all products of the land of nice, created by craftsman who use only the finest of ingredients, never substitute anger for passive aggressiveness as other companies do, all in the pursuit of making Minnesota the most average state in the Union.

Comments

[sdn.livejournal.com]

lydy, how long are you here for? are you staying with pnh and tnh??

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Lydy, you are a powerful writer. I note what looks like a lot of common ground on sleep disorders; I don't have sleep apnea, but my general tendency over the past 28 years has been, if an alarm is going to go off, I either lie awake all night waiting for it, or I wake up two or three hours before the alarm feeling utterly wretched and unable to go back to sleep. For this reason, I try to make "vacations" (or breaks from work that aren't quite as vacation-like as one might think) into something where I can sleep 10 or 11 hours a night while I'm not at work. I aimed my whole life, for a stretch, at doing what I could to get into a job where I could work exactly the hours I wanted (1:15 to 7:15 p.m.) -- and I'm scared out of my wits to be at risk of losing this job, for fear I will wind up with a more conventional day job and a sleep debt like yours. Keep us posted.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

I have this problem when my seritonin/norepinephrine levels are not right. And sometimes after the fall time change. Jordin however, needs more sleep then average. He can sleep anytime anywhere. I've never known an adult who sleeps so much. Your doctor may be right you need more sleep and not right about the amount. Maybe you need 10 hours/night. Or 8 hours a night and a nap. That's Jordin's favored pattern.

Do what you need to. When the people at work ask what you did on your vacation, smile mysteriously and blush.

MKK

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I was in New York this morning.

No, wait. That was yesterday morning. This morning I was in Chicago.

Happy Thanksgiving.

B

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

You continue to have my sympathy about the sleeping problems.

I can think of very few things better to do on a vacation than sleep enough. But it does seem to defeat the idea of "travel hundreds of miles to see people".