Sweet sleep

Today I went and saw my family practice doctor. I don't know that he is actually "mine" as I have never seen him before. Actually in four years here, he is my fourth doctor. They keep giving me a resident who keeps moving on and leaving me all alone.

This doctor quizzed me on my sleep and the unfortunate set of circumstances that sent me in to see him. He agreed that travelling to a strange place and being on a medication for 22 days that caused insomnia was not a good situation. He told me he would give me 10 Ambien. He told me not to start taking them until I was adjusted to the jet lag issues that usually result from jumping successive time zones.

I was not really impressed with the idea of 10 Ambien. I have 22 days of insomnia. While, yes, he said I could cut the pills in half (but not tell him about it), I still wasn't feeling too good about 10 pills for 22 days. He said the reason for the lesser amount was the fear of dependency.

Dependency? What's that? I've never dependent on anything -- including codeine. Right.

However, the resident then left to talk with his supervising physician and came back with the doctor and a prescription for 30 pills. His supervising physician also sat down to talk about my trip to Nigeria for a full five minutes -- no questions about anything related to my health -- just questions about our exciting trip. I guess he judged me not to be a drug addict and agreed to give me a few more pills.

However, in the course of all this, I've made a decision about my sleep. I just cannot talk about it. It only causes negativity. The other night I was awake from 2:30-5:00. When I got up "officially" at 6:30am, JB was in the guest room -- obviously frustrated with my restlessness. He asked me how I slept. I told him the facts and left it at that. Then I told him I no longer felt the need to share vividly just how pathetic the sleep was.

So if you ask me how I am sleeping, I'm going to do my best to tell you without complaining about it. I don't want to be a complainer. I want to be as tough as possible. The thing is though, when you haven't slept, your desires get tossed out the window. You start thinking and feeling things you know you wouldn't be feeling or thinking had you slept well. But I'm going to do my best.

I'll also keep you posted on the winter storm that is supposed to be coming through our area tomorrow ... we have a bunch of weekend plans so we are hoping that these aren't impeded by what could be a nasty ice storm. We'll see. Good bye 40's!