Whenever I have surgery, before they put me under the anesthesiologist says, “ok, we’re starting the IV, so you’ll begin falling asleep right away.” To be funny, I’ll say, “Naw, I’m staying awake.” That always causes the OR team to stop in their tracks. Then I get a turbo boost and my eyes roll back like a bluefin tuna. I’ve gotten better at hanging in there (at least for a couple of seconds) – this week the OR staff did the same thing, but I could still hear them talking, “Wow, he’s still awake.” Then the white noise amplified and my vision blurred; boom, boom out went the lights. I probably shouldn’t do that, but I like testing limits. The same thing goes with normal sleep – you shouldn’t fight it or test your limits, but everyone does. We all want to sleep more but we’re too busy juggling things. It’s an unhealthy contradiction.
Hospital beds have never been comfortable, plus you’re getting poked and prodded every four hours for vitals, never allowing true sleep. I’m usually falling asleep in the car right after discharge then sleep for a week later like Rip Van Winkle. On most days, I have no problem going to sleep; I get up before 5:00 AM every day, whether or like it or not, and then dive into bed around 9:30 PM. I used to stay up late on the weekends, but when I do now, I’m a zombie for days. Even harder is entertaining at the house. I’ll do my best to stay up later, but even if there is a house full of people still hanging out, I’ll do The Fade and dive in bed without saying goodnight. That wins me zero points on the home front, but sleep is involuntary; my switches turn off no matter what Emily Post thinks about party-hosting etiquette.
Long ago, early in our marriage, we decided getting a comfortable king mattress was more important than eating. Our problem now is the cats like king mattresses too so they sleep between us. “You try sleeping on a one-foot-wide cat perch,” Jameson pointed out. That was a benefit of business travel where I could flop onto the worst Hilton Garden Inn mattress and starfish the entire bed to my heart’s content. Now with two massive Maine Coon cats hogging three-quarters of the bed the once giant king mattress feels smaller than a baby crib. Sleep advice is easier said than done since a lot of issues from the day cloud our sleep at night. Oh, that’s right, most of us point a flashlight (iPad, iPhone, iWatch) into our retinas all night and crank up the notifications for everything under the sun. “Maybe someone wants to buy the chipped platter I put on Facebook Marketplace!” Isn’t that the real solution, turn the lights off, take care of your issues during the day, and then sleep at night? Give me a break – Robert Frost still questioned this a hundred years ago. Slainte.
“But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
Pete Lawson is a six-time cancer survivor and writes the weekly cancer survivor blog The Irish Cockroach (www.irishcockroach.com). Originally from Ticonderoga, New York, he married his wife Diane in 1986 and they raised three sons Devin, Dillon, and David in Florida. Pete’s entire career has been in hospitals and healthcare organizations starting at sixteen years old in the hospital laundry and growing into an EVP of a Fortune 500 company. He currently provides strategic advice to health systems.
link