Insomnia

I love to sleep. I am not a night owl or an early bird. I am a go-to-bed-early-and-sleep-late kind of gal. A good nights sleep is essential to my functioning. Insomnia is a disaster for me as I am super sensitive to caffeine so I can't really fake a bad night's sleep with a regular mocha. If I can have a non-decaf cup of coffee, I am bouncing off the walls with too much energy, which does not make me the best co-worker in the world.

When the Boy was at Wilderness, Hector/Yoda, the leader of Family Services, explained to us that people have been waking up in the middle of the night for thousands of years. This "sleep through the night" thing is more a result of industrialization because people had to get up in the morning to go to work. In an agricultural society, when you were tired in the middle of the day when the work was done, you'd just take a nap.

Since I am not living in the woods and I have a nine-to-five job, I need my sleep at night. I have been having insomnia on and off for the past several months, which is horrible. Instead, I am learning to embrace it, and by embracing it a bit, I am able to fall back to sleep a little bit faster. When I wake, I might lay in bed and write in my journal or read a book. I might try a few meditative exercises to clear my mind instead of dreading it or worrying about how I am going to feel the next day.

I also ask what is my night mind trying to tell me? What is it that my brain is processing that I can't access during the day? Now I am trying to listen instead of wishing it away.

Sleep, or Lack Thereof

The male creatures in my family are conspiring against me. They don't want me to sleep.


I. The Boy

The Boy doesn't turn his devices off until 9:30 or 10:00, after much pleading. After his device is locked and charged, he becomes very chatty at the exact moment I want to collapse from exhaustion. Sometimes he chats about the mundane.

"Mom," says the Boy, "Look how many times I can flip my toothbrush on my finger."

Go the fuck to sleep, I think.

Other times he want to talk about things far from mundane, like his future life plans.

"Mom," says the Boy, "I've been thinking that M.E. is going to be the right choice for me. I like building things and understanding how they are made. I think mechanical engineering is going to be a good fit for me."

Lovely, I think, but could we have had this same conversation when the sun was up?

Other times, the conversation are profound.

"Mom," says the Boy, "I just feel better after a long run. I love getting up in the morning and starting my day running cross country with the boys."

For this, I stay up and listen, and force my eyelids open as he tells me how running is transformative for him. Why does he wait until I am so tired to talk to me? Does he know that he will have an open mike, that I am too tired to respond? That I will expect him to keep it short, thereby putting no pressure on him? Perhaps.

II. Jack

Jack has been on call at the trauma center this weekend. The new residents communicate by text instead of phone calls in the middle of the night. You think this might be an improvement, but it's not.

Before:
Pager screeches at 4:00 a.m.
Jack turns pager off and goes to other room to talk.
I fall back asleep or don't hear pager screeching in the first place.

Now:
Cell phone "pings" at 4:00 a.m.

A light flashes from the phone.

tap, tap, tap, goes the text reply

Swoosh.

pause for twelve seconds

ping
flash of light
tap tap tap tap
swoosh
pause pause pause
ping flash
taptaptapswoosh

Ping...

I am wide awake after the eighth ping. It is like chinese water torture except instead of water it is noise. They could use this method to wake people from comas. I bet I could tset this on someone in a coma to see if they would revive. If they did, I could write a paper and get a grant and be famous for bringing people back to living.

I tell Jack to make a phone call instead of texting. He does. The next night he is on call again. He sleeps on the couch. Thankfully.

III. Fox

Even the dog is keeping me awake. He has been wearing a cone since he was bitten by a raccoon so he doesn't lick his wound. Now when his head itches in the middle of the night, his leg whacks the cone. Loudly. And the cone prevents him from actually scratching the itch, so he just tried harder. The harder he tried, the more it itches and the more his leg whacks the cone. Egads. I pick up the dog, scratch his head, and put him on the bed, where he sleeps like a rock.

I wish I could do the same.

Pokemon GO: Beer, Coffee & Dog Editions

I can't decide if Pokemon GO is the most brilliant thing ever or the work of Satan.

I was listening to NPR the other day as I was picking my son up from music camp. The Boy calls it "band camp." His friend who plays the cello calls it "music camp." Music camp sounds like they are playing Beethoven. Band camp sounds like a bunch of young boys blasting away rock music on their horns. This camp is closer to Beethoven, but not by much. For some reason, the Boy loves this camp. I can't figure out why.

I digress, but not really. I'd much rather have my kid playing music three hours every day instead of looking for Pokemon on his phone. And I already give him a fairly long leash when it comes to going around town. This week, I let the Boy ride his bike from the U District to Ballard to visit Card Kingdom to buy Magic Cards.* Round trip it is thirteen miles. I encourage (okay beg) my son to bike to soccer practice at Magnuson Park so I don't have to drive him. Win-win, I say. Good for the environment, and I get forty minutes of my life back. My high school history teacher said sleeping and driving places were the two biggest wastes of time ever. I disagree with him on sleeping, but agree with him on driving. In short, I hate it; therefore, I am happy to let my kids take the bus or bike around town. Seattle Public Schools gives high school and middle school kids who live a certain distance from school an Orca card for travel. I asked someone in transportation once if kids use the cards to go all over town.

"No," he said. "Almost all of the trip are to and from school." Wow. Kids who are given a free pass don't use it.

Until now. Jack and I regularly walk our dog through Ravenna Park. This past week, we have seen groups of people looking for Pokemon, people we have never seen in the park before. In one sense, I am glad these people are getting their dose of Vitamin N,* but seriously, can't they do it without looking at a screen? Are they really communing with the trees and ferns, dipping their toes in the creek? No. They are developing near-sightedness by looking at their phone. People have crashed their cars and walked off cliffs looking for Pokemon. Little kids have left their homes in the middle of the night and were found miles away from home looking for digital creatures.

The upside: When the Boy and I were at the Sounders game last week, I overheard two moms talking. Her daughter rarely left the house until she got Pokemon GO. Her kids met kids who live in their neighborhood who they have never met before. There is a quantifiable uptick in exercise for children in the in the past few weeks. They boys on my son's soccer team joke that Michelle Obama has been trying to get kids to exercise for seven and a half years, and Pokemon GO succeeded in less than a month. My dad saw young people forty to fifty pounds overweight outside walking around Antrim Lake. Jack and I saw a family with three generations walking through the Ravenna woods tonight.

Why did we need an app to get us outside?

Back to NPR. I heard that Pokemon GO was developed by the Google Maps people. They wanted to create a game using Google Maps. There were other games like this before, but Pokemon GO was the one that clicked with people.

Maybe I would understand this better if I understood Pokemon, but could we think of something else? What about micro-brewries? Every time you go to a local micro-brewery, you get a gold star. Maybe you get one for each beer you drink. It could be a pub crawl game.

"Wouldn't you get really drunk?" the Boy asked when I presented this idea at dinner tonight.

"You wouldn't have to drink everything all in one night," I said. "Maybe over the summer or something."

You could do it for independently owned coffee shops. Heck, you could even collect dog breeds. Give each dog a tag or scan their picture. See how many dogs you can find while walking around. I'd might feel sorry for the poor owner of a saluki who might get harassed because their saluki is the only one around for ten miles, but other than that, it could be fine. Dog owners usually smile and say hi to people anyway. Or there could be a combo game: which dogs did you see in coffee shops?

You are welcome, internet, if someone hasn't already created this idea.

____
* I wanted him to load the the "Find My Friend" app on his phone so I could see where he was in case something happened. "I won't get kidnapped," he said.
"But what if you get hit by a car?" I said.
"That would be bad if you looked at your phone and saw I was at Harborview Hospital," he said.

** Vitamin N = Nature according to Richard Louv.

Dreams

In physical therapy, my goals are to return my extension (straightening of the leg) and flexion (bending of the leg) close to my healthy leg. I went into PT Friday morning. I initially had figured that morning appointments might be better since my leg would be theoretically fresh. In the afternoon, my leg is tired from being up and about. I was wrong. I woke up and I was stiff. When I sleep, my leg bends. When I went in PT, my extension was horrid. I told Evan about bending my leg while I sleep, and he said to keep it straight when I sleep.

"How can I do that?" I asked.  "I am asleep and I don't know I am bending it."

"It is really hard for people to change the position of how they sleep," he said. "When you wake up in the middle of the night, make sure it is straight."

Last night, I was thinking about keeping my leg straight. Every time I woke up, I adjusted the position of my leg. Keeping my leg straight became part of my dreams. I dreamt I was visiting a distant corner of the earth, and we had to fly to get from one place to another. Instead of being a usual airline where you have to get folded up like an accordion to fit into the seats, this airline required me to keep my leg straight. Egads.

Sleeping: Brace or no Brace?

Bike Time: 10 minutes barely
Distance:  I was going too slow for the bike to turn on to measure

I wish I were napping right now. It is 4:25 in the afternoon. The Boy should be home from a friend's house at 5:00, and Clare Adele should be home from track practice around the same time. I don't see the "value add" of napping right now. As soon as I'd nod off, I'd have to wake up, and what is the point of that? Or, I might fall asleep and not wake until 8:00 p.m..  I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep later tonight, and that would be bad.

I love to sleep. It is one of my favorite pastimes. When I was a kid, I would volunteer to go to sleep at night when I got tired. My parents must have been spoiled to have a kid who would go to bed without a fuss, who would want to go to bed.

I still love to sleep. Part of the reason I love to sleep is because I have a low tolerance for caffeine, especially in coffee. I turn into a squirrel when I drink non-decaf. Most people think I am exaggerating when I say I can't drink coffee because I get too hyper. I went to brunch with a friend and ordered a regular mocha. Normally, I am a fast talker. On caffeine, I am a rabbit. My friend said she would never let me drink regular coffee again. My favorite story though I went I drank coffee when I had the flu. I went to the coffee shop around the corner from my house and ordered a split shot mocha. I came home and was doing the laundry and dancing in the kitchen while I did the dishes. This is the best flu I've ever had. I feel great! And then the caffeine wore off about six hours later and I crashed. Hard.

Sleep post-surgery has been a challenge. I've been so tired at times I crash into sleep and nothing can wake me. Other times, every little twinge in my knee would wake me up. I discovered recently that I rotate in my sleep, starting on life left side, flipping to my back, then the right side, then my belly then starting all over again. Normally, this does not cause a problem, especially since I never noticed or cared how I slept before. Now, how I sleep determines if I sleep.

I have been floating back and forth between sleeping with the brace and without the brace, and I've made some interesting discoveries.

1. In the first few days after the surgery, I thought the brace was giving me grief when I slept and I hated it. Looking back, the real problem was my knee being stiff, sore and tender versus the brace being the problem. It was easier to blame the brace than my post-op knee.
2. I would sleep with the cryo-cuff ice bag, and that wasn't much better. It would slip down and not pad my knee, or it would pad my knee too much in different positions, such as when I slept on my stomach.
3. Bending me knee hurts when I sleep. I'll bend it and I'll be fine, and then a bit later it will get stiff, start to ache, then wake me up.
4. The brace is fine for my injured leg, but it scratches and bugs my non-injured leg. 

One night I slept with the ice cuff and without the brace. The next morning, the ice cuff was warm, and my usually swollen knee looked so beautifully tiny. The downside was I was up very two hours every time I shift in my sleep and my knee and the brace had to remind a comfortable place. A few nights ago, I decided to sleep without the ice cuff and without the brace. My right (non-injured leg) liked spooning and cuddling with my injured leg instead of feeling the brace's hard plastic and scratchy velcro tabs. Again, I was up every few hours when my knee would get achy from being bent. Last night, I tried again going to bed with the ice cuff, but switched to the brace in the middle of the night.

There probably is no right way for me to sleep until I settle into a better recovery period from the surgery. In the meantime it is trial and error, and giving in to the will to nap.