For whatever reason, today is a blah kind of day. I had a rough sleep night, which…I’m worried. Before I ended up in the hospital, i had shitty sleep. I was legendary for it, honestly. When I was in college, I got four hours a night and was barely functioning. With Taiji, I inched my way to more sleep. Better sleep was debateable, but it was certainly more. Before I ended up in the hospital, I was up to 6 1/2 hours a night. But.
Here’s the thing. I’ve always been a night owl. The time I feel most awake and productive is between 12 a.m. and 2 a.m. It used to be even later, but I’ve been trying to hold it down to 2 a.m. as my bedtime. I’ll get to that in a second.
Even as a child, I never went to bed before midnight. My mother would put me to bed at eight or whatever, and I would stuff a t-shirt under my door so I could read until midnight. Reading was my escape from a brutal world that had no place for me.I was an alien in an alien world, and I wanted out.
It didn’t help that there was something really wrong with me. When I was fourteen, My mother took me to the doctor because there was obviously something wrong with me–but we were not sure what. I had a resting pulse of over a hundred. Plus, I was depressed as fuck, but that was not part of the physical problem. It turned out that I had Graves’ Disease. Back then, it was not understood well. I had to take nine pills three times a day, which meant twenty-seven pills in total. I had to get my blood drawn every month, which not fun. I have terrible veins, and the phlebotomists missed with astounding consistency. This was in the days before the butterfly needle, so it was basically being poked in the elbow over and over and over again. There was one guy who insisted that he was great in finding veins. He was not. he missed, but refused to take out the needle. He kept wiggling it in my arm, saying that he would find my vein. Meanwhile, I felt as if I had a hot poker jabbing me from inside my arm, and the pain almost made me pass out.
I have one vein that is passable. It’s in the crook of my left elbow. It’s the one that I always offer to phlebotomists when they needed to take my blood. Most of the time, they accepted my offer and tried to take my blood from that spot. Once in a while, they took a look and said they wanted to see the other elbow. I would show them my rigt elbow even though I knew it was futile. Yes, my left elbow is bad, but the rigt one is even worse.
I can’t tell you what an improvement the butterfly needle made. The first time a phlebotomist used it in the back of my hand was revelatory. Wait. You mean you can take blood easily from the back of my hand, and it won’t hurt? You can get it in one poke no problem?
Glorious! Another story about bad blood-drawing. I used to give blood to the Red Cross. It was traumatic each time because they were not phlebotomists, which meant they were basically just stabbing until they got blood. Which was really difficult for me. One time, the woman kept poking me fruitlessly and could not hit a vein. She was flustered, even though I told her it was no big deal because i had bad veins. She finally managed to hit one, but the blood was taking forever to come out. When she came back to check on me, the vial wasn’t even a quarter full. She jostled the needle on purpose to try to make more blood come out, but she accidentally dislodged the needl. The blood sprayed everywhere and that was the last time I gave blood. (It wasn’t just that. It was also because I kept getting tats, and you can’t give blood for a year after getting a tat.)
Long story short, I got my thyroid destroyed with radiation and now only take one pill a day. That makes me hypothyroid, but I still don’t feel cold. It should make me sleep more, but it did not. I still slept very little, which was frustrating.
In my twenties, I had up to five dreams a night. I rarely had good dreams, and they were often terrible nightmares. Sleep was not my friend, and I tried to stay out of it as much as possible. Even when I was sleeping up to six hours a night, that was with waking up twice. By the time I ended up in the hospital, I had built up to 6 1/2 hours a night.
Then, I died. Twice. And came back twice. When I came back for good, I was drugged to the gills on sedatives, barbs, and narcotics. And I was recovering from being dead. This meant that I was sleeping a ton. A ton. I slept more than I was awake, I think, especially the first day or two conscious. When I went home, I was out like a light by ten at night. I got up at six, maybe waking up once in the meanwhile. It was amazing. I have never slept that well in my life. It was sleep I had heard of, but never experienced. I could not bleieve how rested I felt after a solid and tight eight hours. Who knew?
For the first several months after going home, I kept to the same schedule. Bed by ten and up by six. Waking up once to pee before immediately falling asleep again. But then I started to slip. I kept pushing my bedtime back little by little, and now I’m back to going to bed around two and getting up at ten. In theory, this is not a bad idea beacuse I do not have to get up at any specific time. I like the middle of the night for the illusion that I’m the only one in the world. What a lovely thought.