Sleep Deprivation, Day 39

(Okay, it's not that exact many days. It's actually closer to two months.)

I'm seriously tired. I mean honest-to-goodness, fall-down, having-worries-about-driving kind of tired.

I have trouble staying asleep. I fall asleep most times fairly quickly. I go to be around the same time each night, and get up most days at the same time. I don't drink heavily caffeinated beverages, I don't eat spicy food, but I do eat regular nutritious meals... at least a few hours before bedtime. I have a "getting ready for bed" routine, including making sure I'm comfortable for bed. I sleep in a secure place with soft warm covers, next to a portable human heating blanket who is great to cuddle with.

And yet, in the middle of the night, I wake up.

Lately it's been worse. I caught a cold a fortnight ago (jeezus, was it only that long ago?) and have a lingering cough that only seems to affect me when I'm trying to sleep. During the day? No real problems. Sleeping? I wake up coughing my lungs out to the point of painfully scratching my throat from the force. When I was sick, Boyfriend woke me up to dose me with cough syrup. I was coughing in my sleep. Now at least I wake myself up so I can take care of it on my own, but the downside is I hardly get any sleep. Last night, for example, I woke up coughing, but had already taken a dose and a half of NyQuil, so to avoid sleeping right through my alarm, I tried drinking water. It worked for about a half an hour. Then I was back up again.

Oh, yeah. I take NyQuil, and still wake up coughing. Most recently it's NyQuil Cough, after NyQuil regular didn't fix things. It made a dent, but only a dent. Still waking up. Still coughing.

But even before trying to medicate myself with cough-suppressing sedatives and tranquilizers, I was waking up. Too cold. Too hot. Covers too wrinkled. Blankets too bunched. Crazy ass dreams. Moonlight too bright. Cat jumped onto the bed. Boyfriend rolled over. I rolled over. Sometimes no reason at all. Just... awake. I blink a few times, maybe check the clock (if I even WANT to know what time it effin' is), get myself comfortable... and drift off. Usually to wake back up again later. Anywhere between two and five times a night.

Obviously, this isn't a good thing. I've been doing the breathing exercises, the routines, the careful management of habits. Soon I'm going to try very slow yoga. It could be stress, it could be something in my brain. I don't know anymore. I don't know if I ever knew in the first place, but my mind's so fogged and scrambled I can barely tell which way is up anymore. I've mentioned this to a doctor, she gave me some advice... but told me that - should this continue - I may need to go with over-the-counter medication to help me get some downtime. The brain without sleep can handle things for a short time, but - like water - it doesn't take long for the deprivation to start causing damage.

Oddly enough, much like water, lack of sleep after a sustained period causes permanent damage... and death. While dehydration causes multiple organs to shut down, lack of sleep causes the brain to start to short out, like an overheating circuit board. Hallucinations, severe personality shifts - usually to a much darker, paranoid level - and nervous tics are signs of severe sleep deprivation. Pretty soon the brain starts to experience irreversible damage. After about a week or so of extended lack of sleep, the body shuts down, and the subject dies. I did a report on sleep deprivation in college and read up on all the horrible gory details of the experiments on rats, the violent reactions of self-mutilation and lack of ability to function. I read the story of the radio personality who went sleepless for a fundraiser, and by the end of the run, his mental state was permanently altered into a much darker form.

SO I know the dangers. I know the risks. I don't know the cause. I don't know the reason. But before too much longer, I think I'm going to have to choose a more drastic solution. This can't continue. I'm becoming a hazard to myself and others.

Sleep. It's a necessity, not an option.