Let Her Sleep, For When She Wakes She Will Move Mountains

April 20, 2014

I've talked about (my awful) diet. And so I should probably talk about sleep (or lack there of.)

Me and Sleep have always gotten along just fine, except for when Emily started to teethe at 10 months old and since Ethan was born till he was almost 2 lol. Having kids made me aware of how important sleep is and also that you can live on very little of it in short periods, without too many detrimental effects. You may put your keys in the fridge and attempt to hang the milk jug from the key rack, but you realize both mistakes (fairly) quickly...

Ok, I may have lost my set of keys once...like for good...but we still have Phil's set! Disaster averted...(or at least the few hundred bucks it would have cost to get a new van key...maybe don't bring up the "Key Incident" to Phil...)

But before my Inner Ninja showed her face in the two weeks prior to my diagnosis, I was not sleeping well. At all. Like maybe 2-3 hours some nights. And the not sleeping would stress me out and then it became a vicious circle. 

Some nights when I couldn't shut my mind off I would curl around Phil and shake. 

For hours. 

Sadly not because I was cold. It was the pure terror coursing through my veins responsible for that lovely reaction. So when I say those were dark days, they really were.

The night I was diagnosed, my doctor prescribed me sleeping pills. It took me two nights of no sleep (honestly - I'm lucky if I got 2 hours combined for the two nights) to get the prescription filled. I was already looking ahead to treatment and all that but I think those first two nights I did a lot of my processing. (It would have been a hell of a lot more convenient if my brain could've done this processing during the day...)

It became a battle - dreading going to bed cause it meant worrying if I didn't fall asleep. So finally I started with a half sleeping pill. It got me through till 2AM, then I couldn't go back to sleep. Took a full sleeping pill the next few nights. Once my appetite came back and  my anxiety slowly returned to non DEFCON 5 levels, I dropped the dose to half. Most nights that took me to 5AM...which was like the first time the baby sleeps through the night - I wanted to celebrate when I opened my eyes and it wasn't the middle of the night!! 

(I was smart enough to celebrate internally and quietly as I don't think Phil would have felt a 5AM wake up was necessarily a good thing lol)

I dropped the dose to half the night after I met with my Mr Kinda Handsome Surgeon. The night after my CT scan I was sleeping without pills. Wrong or right I looked at a "drugless" sleep as my next goal. I am so happy I can now sleep without pills. But I also learnt there are times in life when a good nights sleep is desperately needed and if a pill will help, so be it.

So if I mention odd remarks about sleeping, I'm just celebrating more small victories in this war.

These days I'm awake usually between 5-5:30AM. Every morning. 

But I've learnt to enjoy this time. I'm able to collect my thoughts. Sometimes I write.  Or Scroll through Facebook lol Maybe one day I'll get to the point of wanting to run with Daisy (that might be too lofty a goal at that time even for me ha!) It's become one of my favourite times of the day. 

Yes, I'm the only one awake in my house but I finally don't feel alone, and I don't fear being alone with my own thoughts - I actually welcome it. It's liberating and peaceful.

A BIG Silver Lining. And for that I'm grateful (and probably Phil too cause I don't keep him up all night or wake him at some ungodly hour...) 

And the tea....Bobbi's tea that she dropped off - Mothers Little Helper from David's tea - is amazing!! Not only does it taste delicious, I have slept through the night, without waking once, every night since I've started drinking it!! So if you need some help to relax and settle the mind before bed- get this tea!! (the overuse of exclamation marks should tell you how much I enjoy it...)