Oww Dammit

After boasting yesterday about my new and exciting sleep patterns, I can't sleep at all tonight.  I tossed about for almost two hours, got up, took additional pain meds, tossed for another hour then just decided to stay up.  It's now 3:00AM, and my ribs/chest won't let me sleep at all. 

It actually eases my chest pain somewhat if I sit up straight with my back against a chair or the couch. Laying down puts pressure on my ribs and makes them ache. Too bad I can't sleep standing up like a horse.

Apparently I pay dearly for just about any movement I make during the day. The movement that caused this particular ache was an attempt to water my weeping willow tree, which has been dropping leaves like crazy.  It's important that I save this tree, one, because it cost a couple hundred dollars, two, it's the only remaining tree in the back yard, and three, willows grow fast and it has already reached a nice size.  Last year I lost two yellow poplars to the killer heat and drought.

I was extra careful to move slowly, with no sudden jerks or twists, etc... unrolled about three loops of hose, dragged it, unrolled, dragged, etc.  The hose was already outside, hanging on a hose thing attached to the outer wall of the house and the tree is only about twenty feet away from the hose source.  Twenty feet of unrolling and dragging was enough to lay me low.

The weather doofus is predicting killer heat today - over 100 degrees, with a heat index of around 112ish. The Tennessee Valley suddenly thinks it's Death Valley.  I have been warned by the doc to stay out of the heat for any length of time.  90 degrees is the cutoff point for the heart people.

I'll be staying indoors, and shoving dogs outside periodically.  There is no mistaking they are inside dogs.  They automatically do their business and line up at the door as soon as they're done when it's this hot, wanting in immediately, foregoing the 112 degree outside water in preference of the 72 degree inside water.  They have trained me to let them in as soon as possible.


Addendum:  The actual temperature was a record setting 106, with a heat index of 125.  It was officially hotter in Memphis than it was in the Sahara.

Into the Arms of Morpheus

I started taking the sleeping pills the doc gave me. I am getting actual sleep that happens at normal bedtime.

They are very mild sleeping pills - Dalmane, but they appear to have done the trick.  I'm kind of excited.  I still wake up around 4am in pain, but I expected that because it's about when the pain pill dose wears off.  I also wake up if I need to turn over, since that actually causes a *different* huge pain too.  I'm still a wreck, but at least now I have a chance to sleep.

Since I can now compare actual sleep and the weird *non-sleep* I was having, there is a enormous difference between the two.  My brain would try to dream, but it would incorporate *awake* items into it.  For instance, if the TV was on, the same program would be playing in my dream.  If the phone would ring, I would have a goofy half asleep phone conversation.  I even sleep-texted an entire conversation about Spongebob Squarepants.  (I have never watched even one episode of Spongebob Squarepants.)

I would dream about people and think they were actually in my living room. (I wondered why the dogs were never upset.) Dreaming about people visiting didn't worry me until I started dreaming about dead people and past events. I didn't realize I had been dreaming until something else would happen to jar me out of it: The IM sound, or a TV commercial, for example.

I hadn't had actual, restful sleep or a normal dream for almost three months.  No wonder I've been such a mess.  I only get one refill, so I can't get overly fond of them (dammit).