I suppose I wasn’t ready for any part of this new life, but I didn’t expect sleep to turn into such an ordeal.
I don’t remember having a ton of problems sleeping during April and May when we had him in the house. Nor when we were in the hospice. I mean, sleeping was hard in April and May because some of the night nurses just made so much noise. And I couldn’t sleep long when we were in the hospice since I wanted to be up in Colin’s room shortly after 6 a.m. every day.
But I remember going to sleep and staying asleep during all that time.
And then we got home after he died and, suddenly, I didn’t sleep very well any more. I’d fall right asleep: That was never a problem. Staying asleep? Not so much. Most days I would wake up after 3-4 hours of sleep and then really have to toss and turn until I could get back to sleep. Problem was, once school started, this meant I was usually waking up around 3 a.m. and then getting back to sleep just as I had to get up to shove Emma and Noah out the door to school.
Things then took a strange twist when I woke up one night to find Christina had hooked me up to the finger clip we had for Colin to check his blood oxygenation. It got even creepier because, when I woke up to this tableau, I immediately asked what was going on. But Christina wouldn’t answer. Turned out she was trying to count my breathing rate or heart rate or something like that, but I’m here to tell you it’s uber creepy to wake up like that and then have the person in bed just stare at you.
Christina is worried that I might have sleep apnea, which is apparently a thing in the Sorrells family, which is why I was wearing the whole get-up you see in the picture above. I hope it worked, because I feel I barely slept last night. It didn’t help that Emma showed up and hogged the bed for half the night, but I was also probably uncomfortable with all that on. I should get a verdict by Tuesday or Wednesday.
So, we’ll see. Right before Christmas, my therapist told me I can get melatonin over the counter in German pharmacies, which frankly knocked my socks off, since you basically need a doctor’s note to get ibuprofen here (and will get a serious talking to from customs if you try to mail some to yourself, I can tell you from experience). But I got some. It’s a tiny, tiny dosage mixed in with some other homeopathic stuff, but it does seem to help. I have kept waking up at 3 a.m., but I’m now able to roll back and go to sleep. And I can tell you from personal experience that if a child shows up in the middle of the night to philosophize, it doesn’t put me down so hard that I don’t wake up when the debate club fires up.
Still, I wish I knew why I wasn’t sleeping. I’m tired, I can assure everyone of that. I don’t feel like I’m having bad dreams. I don’t even know if I’m technically having recurring dreams, since they’re so infrequent and different every time. The basic scenario is that I’m talking to a health care professional – I might be in the hospice, the hospital or at home – and they’re really excited about some new thing they’ve discovered that will make Colin feel better or maybe even cure him. And I’ll listen to them for a long while and think it doesn’t sound like a bad idea when, out of the blue, I’ll remember “Oh, Colin’s dead, so we can’t do anything for him any more.” And that’s when I wake up. The only variation I had was a few days ago where a former work colleague was trying to sell an unauthorized version of Colin’s story to some TV station and I, oddly, didn’t really care.
But again, that’s not every night and … well, I just don’t know. I’m seeing the doctor last night. Maybe I can get a better melatonin dosage after that and really sleep through. All I know is: I don’t plan to be up late tonight.