The Graveyard Shift

Didn't Stephen King write a book about this? If not he certainly should have. I can be his main character, probably possessed and, more than likely, murderous. Why anyone would put themselves through this willingly on a regular basis escapes me.

I currently have a wonderful opportunity to spend one full week of nights at work. Granted I do work in a hospital and I understand people are sick 24/7 but truthfully most of them are sleeping peacefully after 1 am. Occassionally, we get the midnight admit but rarely are they interesting until they are truly diagnosed by the morning staff. Then I find out they had been running down the street naked in 17 degree weather. I miss these stories. Here I get to see the patient come in give him a bit of Haldol but the true story is not dispensed until I hear why the patient required the Haldol. I do all the work and the day shift gets all good stories. Ah, but the night is boring.

I am normally a morning person. When I get home at 8:30 am I don't know whether to sleep or go sailing. I cannot get to bed because I think I should be getting up. (Not to mention the crazy man in my house who sleeps alone while I am not there has opened all the windows in the house. Did I mention is was 17 degrees, not Celcius either.)

Closing all the windows, I pick up the newspaper and turn on the morning talk shows. You truly do not realize how perky these people actually are until you have two functioning brain cells. AM talk show host have only one. Yesterday, I watched two people oogle over a man cooking hot dogs. True story. I love a good hot dog but I cannot see the extreme glee expressed by the NY Fox contingent over these wonderful little tubes of nitrates. Maybe it was the relish.

Finally, I crawl into my freezing bed in attempt to get some sleep. Nothing makes your mind race like falling asleep while most of the world arises. You think of all the things you need to get done while you have the entire day to yourself. Conversations you need to have, phone calls you should make, reading to catch up on, bills to pay, dry cleaning to pick up. All of this planning to no avail. Eventually, you will fall asleep and forget all the best laid plans. Your laundry remains unwashed, the dishes, undone, the phone calls or emails forgotten in the throws of the deepest sleep.

I spend the bulk of the day oscillating between sleeping and waking. I try to get some sleep. I avoid the gym and anything else stimulating for fear of being too awake that I cannot get enough sleep to make it through the night, rather the day.

Eventually, another night comes and as I head to work, I panic that I did not get enough sleep. I know I will be fine until 1 am. I can even coast until 2 or 2:30. Then the deepest night comes. Most of my work is done, most of the patients asleep at last. It is 4 am. The clock does not move. My mind and my body fight to keep awake. Who knows if I were to doze off, how long it would take me to become alert or coherant again.

So I fight all night until I see the breath of dawn. I know relief will come soon. I will survive to see another night or another day again. I know that at the end of this seven day stretch I will have mastered this sleeping thing . Just in time to return to my true life. The life of the 9-5 ers or 8-4ers as it is for me.