Friday, January 8, 2016

Sleep


I have never had good sleeping habits. I guess I should say after I was old enough to not have a strict bedtime as prescribed by my parents I have not had good sleeping habits.

When I was old enough to work I often had jobs that kept me up late. Neighbors who often hired me to watch their children while they went out for some fun did not come home until close to the time the sun was coming up. Of course I was not allowed to sit on school nights.

When I set pins in the bowling alley we did not get off work until 11:00 at night. Sometimes a little later if people needed to finish their bowling.

I did not mind. I am somewhat of a night owl. I like the peace and quiet late at night. Coming from a large family it is difficult to find the alone time that we all need. I found mine at night.

Being part of a large family also helped me to be able to fall asleep even if it is noisy. I can shut out noises and just close my eyes.

As an early teenager I spent almost one whole summer in bed. I had no energy and I was so cold. I was extremely anemic. It took a while to get the nutrients into my body before I felt better. In the meantime I slept under lots of covers.

When I was almost 17 I began to have seizures. The medications they had available then were not as kind to a system as some of the newer drugs we have now. I took phenobarbital which is an addictive drug in the beginning. They added dilantin later.

The nature of both drugs made me extremely sleepy. Two aspirin will put me to sleep for several hours so you can imagine the zombified sate I was in when I began to take these drugs. Once again I was often sleeping all day.

After a few months of taking these drugs my body finally adjusted and I began to have normal waking hours. More than 50 years later I am still taking them and I feel no different than I would otherwise.

When my children were small they kept me so very busy. Too often a spit and a promise was all I had time for when it came to cleaning my house.

Every once in a while I would just stay up all night and go through to do the major cleaning I had ignored for too long. I could thoroughly scrub floors and clean under the furniture. There were no children and no husband under my feet needing attention.

My three boys were night owls too. We used to stay up watching horror movies on TV after their father went to bed at night. They all still like to stay up late. I think they like the quiet time too.

My daughter on the other hand is a morning person. She is usually in bed by 9:00. To be fair she has to be at work at 4:30 ot 5:00 so she needs to get her sleep. When they were a bit younger her children would go in and tuck her in right before they went to bed.

Waiting in the doctor's office is long and boring. I take something to read with me. But after an amount of time even reading becomes sleep inducing.

I used to fight sleep in a waiting room. People chuckle at those who fall asleep there. I used to fight it. Then I realized I do not care if they laugh at me. So now I just find a comfortable positio0n for my head and purposely take a nap.

These days I find myself sitting down and then waking up. By that I mean that I did not intend to sleep in my chair but it happens in spite of me. The only time it bothers me is when I intended to watch what was on television and I slept through it.

As you can see sleep has consumed at least a third of my life. I am at a time in my life now that I enjoy a nap now and then. I not only do not feel guilty but I am happy that I am able to have the luxury.

But the best sleep is in my cozy bed. I like my cool sheets and lots of pillows. Then the comforting weight of the blankets and the gentle warmth they provide put me to sleep in no time.

Good night.

13 comments:

  1. Sleep patterns are interesting. I have friends that don't get cranking until 10 p.m. I usually am sound asleep by then. I get up at 5:30 a.m. without an alarm. When the time changes it screws with my clocks for a few days before I get back into my routine.
    And naps. I think an off day without a nap is a wasted day :)
    R

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    1. My mother-in-law would tell herself before she went to bed what time to get up and she did. It did not have to be the same time every day. She was a marvel. I totally agree about naps.

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  2. I like the sentence where you write that you don't care what people think - that is a very good attitude!
    Till five years ago I never had any problems with sleep - then I suddenly woke up more than once a night and felt a bit tired in the day. By now I got back to almost normal (I am a light sleeper - my hearing is 150%, and that is not a blessing in a house where neighbours walk with hard shoes on parquet floor without a carpet after midnight - so: earplugs, light out at 11, up at 6 mostly (I am a lark). I do a lot of sport, and walking, and I never used medication, but of course you have to and I'm glad to read that you adjusted to them so well!

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    1. As far as what other people think their thoughts matter only to them. Most of the people in a doctor's office for instance I will never see again. If I give them a chuckle that makes me happy. My medications no longer make me sleepy. I wonder if I were to discontinue them would I be hyperactive? (That is a joke of course. They once tried to discontinue it and I almost died.)

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  3. I cannot survive at the time 4am.
    I am a morning person.
    I usually watch tv before bedtime, but it ends up tv watches me back.

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  4. I cannot survive at the time 4am.
    I am a morning person.
    I usually watch tv before bedtime, but it ends up tv watches me back.

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    1. One of my brothers and my daughter go to sleep early. My daughter begins her day at 4:00 AM so it has worked well for her.

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    2. I must tell you, as a teenager I babysat a lot and the parents would come home in the wee hours of the morning and that was WAY too late for me! I remember DREAMING of my turned down bed!!
      I have always loved sleep, early to bed and early to rise! I must admit, as I am AHEM, getting older, I sometimes take a quick nap in my chair if I have had a hard day.

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    3. When I babysat so late I just made a bed on the couch. I got up and went home the next morning.

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  5. I'm lucky that I have no trouble falling asleep. Now I schedule a 20 minute mini-nap at 2:30. I enjoy it and feel rested afterwards.

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    1. Those mini naps are refreshing. If you were in management you would call it a power nap.

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  6. One of our sons was epileptic and we became all too familiar with phenobarbital, dilantin, tegretol. He's in his mid-40s now and been seizure-free for many years, but he still has that dread in the back of his mind. He's done well, as have you, and there is a measureless admiration in me for those who proceed with life and fulfillment in defiance of that shadow. My sincere compliments to you.

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    1. Thank you for your compliments. Someone once told me that at least I was in no pain during a seizure. For some types of seizures that is true but in my case I suffer excruciating pain. Each seizure is worse than the last(as with most seizures). I am one of the fortunate ones because I am very well controlled and have not had a seizure in many years.

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