Woke up way too early again!
I woke up this morning, turned off my alarm, took my morning wake-up medicines, and got in the shower. About half-way through my shower, I noticed that it was still dark outside. This was odd, because I’ve been noticing sunlight peeking through the edges of the miniblinds during my showers, lately.
Then, it dawned on me–the alarm I had turned off was not my “morning-wake-up” alarm; it was my “middle-of-the-night” (take second Xyrem dose and go back to sleep) alarm.
So, I finished my shower, then puzzled over what to do next. One option was to go back to bed, but I had already taken my wake-up medicines, and did not have any spare doses to take upon reawakening. The other option was to proceed as usual, getting to work freakishly early, but only having had about two hours of sleep. If necessary, I could always take a nap in my car, at some point during the day.
I decided to head to work. When I got there, I realized that if I was going to take a nap in my car, I needed to do it early, because it would be too hot later in the day. So, I found a nice, quiet, shady corner of the parking lot, cracked the windows, set alarms on my cell phone, and attempted to get comfortable.
Unfortunately, my new car is not so good for sleeping in. No matter how I adjusted the seat, at least one part of my body was either cramped or unsupported. After about 45 minutes of trying to get reasonably cozy, I finally found the right combination of seat position, neck support, and foot placement. For neck support, I ended up using my owner’s manual package (it’s inside a zippered soft leather case) wrapped in a towel, with the seat’s headrest up a few notches. About 30 minutes later, my alarm went off, and I went into the office, feeling very much like a zombie. I bought an energy drink from the deli on the way in, which helped a little bit, but really I was pretty zombified all day.
This started out very similar to the last time I got up way too early, but I took a very wrong turn this time (in part due timing factors, like my current prescription wake-up meds running out next week). Last time, I went back to bed after the shower. If this ever happens again, I will be doing that.
It is also worth noting that last time, I woke up insanely early without any external cues, whereas this time I had an alarm go off. I’ve had that middle-of-the-night alarm go off every night for months, though, so why did I handle it wrong this time?
Perhaps it’s because I changed some variables last night, relating to alarms. I’ve been having trouble remembering to actually take my Xyrem when that alarm goes off, more and more lately. I’ve also been crawling back into bed after turning off my morning-wake-up alarm, on several recent occasions.
So, to combat both of these issues, I did two things differently last night:
- I put my morning-wake-up alarm clock on the floor, on the other side of my nightstand, with the time facing away from the bed. This way, I would be forced to get up to turn it off, and would have to get conscious enough to figure out that it’s facing the wrong way, in order to successfully find the little tiny switch on one side that turns it off.
- I put my middle-of-the-night alarm (an old cell phone) under a paper towel, inside an open box, with my Xyrem bottle on top of the paper towel, and a sheet of bubble wrap partially covering the top of the box. Really, there’s no way to adequately describe what this looked like, so here are some pictures:
If my alarm clock had been on my nightstand–facing towards the bed–I might have noticed what time it was, when I turned off my middle-of-the-night alarm. If my middle-of-the-night alarm had not been hidden inside the odd little box, the way it was, I might have simply turned it off and gone back to sleep. Even if I didn’t take my second Xyrem dose, at least I would have gotten more sleep.
Tonight, to be on the safe side, I’m going to put things back the way they were. Well, I might go ahead and hide my morning wake-up meds a little bit, so I might think twice before taking them. Really, the thing that would help most with my sleep/wake cycle would be to stop staying up late doing things like finishing blog entries! :)
subscribe to entries feed
August 21st, 2007 at 12:05 pm
1) Don’t you look at what time it is when you wake up?!
2) Mid-sleep medicine? That’s insane!
3) It shouldn’t be this hard…
4) I wish when I clicked “Remember me” on the login, that it actually would. Everytime I comment at [home/work] when my last comment was at [work/home], I have to re-login. Bah!
5) Two hours sleep is an insanely low amount to go on!
August 23rd, 2007 at 3:20 pm
@ClintJCL:
1) Yes, but when I wake up, it sometimes takes a few minutes for me to get fully conscious. Besides, I think that half the time, I get up and turn off the alarm without fully waking up.
2) Yeah, it does sound crazy, but if it reduces my EDS, by causing a normal, regular sleep cycle (something I usually don’t have), then it’s worth it.
3) Yes, narcolepsy sucks.
4) I’m still keeping my eye out for any future wordpress.org developments that might enable single-sign-on authentication via wordpress.com… Just checked a couple weeks ago. Tried to get the OpenID thing working, recently, but it didn’t work right. Haven’t had time to muck with it again. Maybe when I messed with that stuff, it caused everyone’s “remember me” setting to reset. I don’t know.
5) Yep!
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I should try openid sometime.