The Middle of the Night

Why is everything so much more concerning if one wakes up in the middle of the night?

I usually wake in the night these days but it's momentary and I'm back asleep before I have time to think about it.

A couple of nights ago I woke up at 1am (ish) having only been asleep a few hours. I went back to sleep but it wasn't 'good' sleep. I was awake again before 3am. This time I couldn't get back to sleep - I was properly awake. At least I felt fully awake.

"Why?" I wondered. In the past if I woke properly there was a discernible reason: usually I would have had rigors which indicated the onset of sepsis to which I am exceptionally prone because of my uretic stent. However it's several years since I had an 'attack' and, so far as I could tell, I felt fine.

But the mind plays silly-beggars at 3am. What if I wasn't okay? I have been known to wake up and been delirious. It's difficult on the phone to the emergency services when one is delirious. Fortunately the emergency services can see my phone number and therefore my  history on their screen. They even know the code for my front door. There is usually an ambulance here quickly. The magic word that scares medics (and me!!) is 'sepsis'. 

I've only had full blown sepsis once and I happened to be in hospital at the time.     I came around from my operation and by the afternoon I was delirious. About  three days later I came around. Of course I just thought I'd been asleep for an hour or two but I was puzzled as to why I had so may tubes all over the place . I felt washed out and woozy but I was fully conscious.

The nurse who happened to be taking readings when I woke said "Well, Graham, good to see you. You've been a bit of a worry." Apparently, according to the doctor, that was a masterful understatement. 

Had I gone to sleep in the middle of the night at home I might not have wakened up at all.  

Anyway after worrying for a short while I went back to sleep and, as you can tell from this post, I woke up again full of life.

Thursday Evening

The first sentence I saw when I woke and picked up my phone was "Your friendly reminder! You've still got some time remaining."  That was encouraging!

I had woken up. It was pitch black. I was looking upwards. On the ceiling (although at that moment I didn't actually know it was the ceiling) was a projection of the screen of my phone with the time on it: 16:56.

If I was in bed and had just woken up at 16:56 there was something seriously wrong. Assuming I was in bed I asked Alexa to switch on the bedside light. As the light went on in an adjacent room (I live in a bungalow) I realised that I was sitting in a recliner chair in the lounge/living room. I have not been well and after lunch decided to have a rest. There I had been sitting or reclining and, according to my Fitbit app, I had been absolutely solidly asleep for the previous 2h 20 mins. In fact I'd been in the chair for the best part of the afternoon.

"Your friendly reminder! You've still got some time remaining." which cheered me up no end was in fact an email letting me know that I could still get a delivery for Christmas from "Boots" a pharmacy which probably makes more money on perfume at well over £100 a bottle. That was a huge shock to me when I recently went in to buy a friend some perfume for Christmas.

Ennui

Over Christmas and New Year and for a while after that I was not at all well. I isolated the whole time despite never testing positive for Covid. Whether I had Covid or not I'll never know. However ever since then I've had days of extreme tiredness where functioning normally has either been a huge effort or downright impossible. Fortunately it hasn't interfered too much with my life because I'm long past the age of having to work to keep food on the table. So if The Ennui hits me I just grumble and accept it. Fortunately one has to be pretty far gone before one can share a morning with friends over coffee in The Woodlands. On the odd occasion I have simply fallen asleep I've managed to avoid falling off my chair in public and when I wake up I'm just expected to catch up with the chat. That's what it's like with true friends. 

When I cam home from hospital last week the airport security was absolutely rammed with people and they were obviously short staffed. So getting through security took the best part of an hour I reckon. My metal work and exterior plumbing is always met with consideration and good humour on both sides but it does hold things up a bit for them. Few people were wearing masks.

The plane was full and  only a few of us were wearing masks.

So a couple of days later I tested positive.

Oddly a friend travelling from a different hospital, through a different airport on a different plane arrived home on Lewis the day before me and tested positive the day before I did. 

Neither of us is particularly unwell. 

However on the too frequent 'Ennui Days' when the feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction is so strong that even thinking about making a meal is an effort, it makes me realise just how many people there are who can't just sit down and say "Bugger it!" are now having to cope with the aftermath of this disease. 

When I was flying home last week I was reminded that, however thick the clouds, the sky above them is always clear:

Dreams By Any Other Name

Yesterday I wrote about sleep. I have posted several times on the subject of dreams. It is not the lack of sleep that concerns me these days nor the number of times I actually get up during a night. What disturbs me most is the variety and number of dreams I have almost every night. If one gets up during the night the, as I understand it,  pre-waking time is often REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. I 'suffer' from that constantly.

The first post I wrote on the subject was on 2 September 2008 entitled

Dreams and Things

For some time now I have been having vivid and prolonged dreams. Unfortunately most of them are not particularly pleasant. I have got to the stage where I classify them as dreams (ok, perhaps even pleasant but I'd rather just sleep), night ponies (I'd rather have had a dream and, in any case I don't usually remember them), night mares (not very pleasant at all but usually forgotten within a day or so) and, worst of all, night stallions (which cause me to wake in a fearful sweat, which often remain with me for weeks and which come back again and again both when I'm asleep and awake).

I'm up early this morning because of a most unpleasant dream. I slept very well indeed and was, I thought, awake listening to the cockerel as the dawn was breaking - the bedroom windows were wide open. All of a sudden I was in Stornoway at the harbour and a lady I was talking to fell into the harbour and was trapped under the water just out of my reach and still blowing bubbles. I can still see her face. It was one of the most realistic dreams I've ever had and all the more horrible because I was convinced that I was awake. Every time I thought of sleep I could see her face again so I got up.

Somewhere out there there must be an explanation or a reason or even a cure. Has anyone any ideas?

Things haven't changed much apart from the numbers of dreams which have increased substantially. I wish that they hadn't.

Thankful Thursday: Sleep

It's far too long since I wrote a Thankful Thursday post. Thank you for reminding me  Fi (of Four Paws and Whiskers) in our recent chat.

Anyway I woke up this morning (in itself always something for which to be thankful) and really was thankful. Thankful for the best night's dreamless sleep I can remember having for many, many years. The recipe? Get up at 0430 after a very disturbed few hours. Drive 250 miles feeling amazingly un-tired having met up in Dunblane for afternoon tea with the pal with whom I'm staying here in Bishopbriggs  so that we could enjoy the last part of the journey catching up. Have dinner and a few glasses of wine and a small cognac as a nightcap. Watch a programme about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Fall into bed around 10.30.

I woke once at 0305 for a comfort break but was asleep again the second my head hit the pillow.

My next wakening was at 0630. I dozed 'till 0700 and got up and made a cup of hot water and lemon.

I had not even been aware of dreaming (which is, perhaps, the most unusual fact about the night)!

So the first thing I thought about as I lay in that blissful half hour was just how blessed I was for most of my first half century in needing little sleep: probably because once I put my head on the pillow I slept the sleep of the dead.

It's nearly 19 years since my first cancer operation left me with a need to get up frequently during the night and 8 since my radio therapy exacerbated the problem. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining. I'm only too glad to be alive to have the inconvenience. It does make one appreciate a relatively undisturbed night even more though.

So this Thursday morning I am grateful, very very grateful.

0444 - Again?

Twice this week I have woken with 0444 showing on the bedside digital clock.  That's the trouble with digital clocks:  it's never 'a quarter to five' or 'half past six' any more.  It's time accurate to a minute.  Assuming, that is, that the clock is accurate.  Mine tend to be.  I'm just like that.  An accurate clock person.   My main clock in the house is one of those clocks controlled by the radio time signal from Rugby and, of course, all the internet devices automatically correct themselves.

Sometimes this accuracy causes me problems.  When I drove one of The Family's cars in New Zealand the time was never accurate so it would throw me because I automatically made the basic assumption that it was.

It's all part of the Edwards Family need to be on time for appointments or at least not to be late.

What I was really thinking when I started this was just how coincidental it was to wake twice at the same time within three days given that my bedtimes vary within a three hour time gap.

Each year when I return I forget just how much catching up there is to do and how much adjusting.  Whilst I am away Pat aka Spesh looks after my affairs and without that my stay away would be, if not impossible, certainly very much harder.  Thank you Pat.  

David and Molly leave tomorrow.  Where did the week go?

 Molly looks rather sinister don't you think?  She's not.  She has a lovely nature (unless you're a cat!)

The RNLI Stornoway Lifeboat has a new home since I left last October.

Thankful Thursday: Sleep

This morning I had (for my own piece of mind) to be up at 0400 to make sure that a friend was up to catch a plane to the US.  I set the alarm on my iPhone.  If I was catching the plane I would usually sleep soundly until the alarm (or, more usually, wake just before it went off).  Presumably because it was someone else I slept in short fits and starts through the night checking the time.  I know that many of my friends do not sleep soundly and are awake a good bit during the night or have difficulty getting to sleep in the first place.  Never having had either problem, last night as I lay awake my mind spent a lot of time mulling all sorts of things over including the terrible curse that chronic insomnia would be. 

Today I am thankful that usually when I put my head on the pillow I fall asleep quickly and I sleep soundly.

The post script to this post is that as soon as I'd checked on my friend I was asleep: properly asleep!

A Pretty Good Day

I've had a busy time since I arrived back in Eagleton and my first visitors have already moved on to stay with other friends.   Although it's often been sunny we've had very strong cold winds.  Yesterday the wind had virtually disappeared and it was a balmy 11℃ (52℉) so that was my first day spent almost entirely in the garden.  It's always good to get the lawns scarified, cut and top dressed for the summer early on.  I managed quite a few other tasks as well and it was wonderful listening to the waterfall into the garden pond, the gentle lapping of the sea below and the calls of the Skylarks.

By the late afternoon I decided that enough was enough and treated myself to a spa bath to ease the  limbs which, I was sure, would otherwise be aching by the morning.

In the evening a friend arrived with an excellent bottle of the red stuff vintage 2006 and in perfect quaffing condition.  We duly obliged the vingneron and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.  By 10pm Carol had left and 15 minutes later I - who rarely goes to bed before midnight - was asleep.  Which is how I stayed for the following seven hours.

It's amazing what a day in the garden can do for the body and soul.

Does Stress Make You Sleep?

I think that these days I'm pretty unstressed although other people may see a me that I don't see.  The subject of MRI scans is topical.  I've had quite a few over the last twelve years.  I'm fortunate that they don't worry me: consciously at any rate.  So I have a habit of falling asleep during full body scans.  

I'm not worried by dentists either.  So I also had to be woken up when I was having a root canal treatment.  As the Dentist so correctly pointed out, he couldn't work on a patient who couldn't keep his mouth open.  There's a certain irony there because I'm usually being told that I can't keep my mouth shut! 

So am I really stressed and sleeping to escape or not stressed and just, well, sleeping.  

Ah well.  Back to ironing the bedding.  All's going to plan......so far.

A Very Strange Night Indeed

It's all disappearing so quickly now that I am properly awake and up and about.  But I have just spent seven and a half of the strangest hours I can recall for a long time.  In fact since a year ago when I've just realised I posted on Dreams and Things.

Before it all started:  Last evening I went to Pat (Spesh Who Comments) and Dave's across the valley for dinner.  A dinner of homemade tomato and smoky (I thought there was an e in smokey but the spillchucker says not) bacon soup,  souflé topped fish pie with salmon and prawns and all sorts of other goodies topped with a cheese crust (wonderful), meringue with raspberries and strawberries and cheeses and biscuits followed by coffee.  How good was that?  Then I had a coffee.  Early on in the evening  I had two small glasses of wine (I was driving). By 9.30 I was full and sleepy with that fullness.  By 1030 I was on my way home after a lovely evening with Real Friends.

I decided that I would not spend any time in the study with Henry, Palin and Samantha but would take Samantha into the living room and wind down by watching an episode of West Wing on DVD (I'm now towards the end of Series 4 where Zoe is kidnapped.  I've seen most of it before, of course but when it was on TV). I decided to pour a very small armagnac (I'm not a great lover of spirits - I prefer wine) but it helps with a very full tum.  I never actually finished it as it happens.

When I opened my emails there was one from a friend who had just had a rather unpleasant experience and was hurting.  That upset me.  In fact various things that have happened over the last few days have upset me.

Why have I told you all that?  Well it may hold a key.  Although I think not.

Now I have never taken a recreational pharmaceutical in my life.  Given that I was a teenager in Liverpool in the 60s and went to The Cavern with The Beatles that may surprise you.  But it's true.

So just before midnight and, my earlier lethargy having left me, feeling wide awake I went to bed.  I decided to play Granados' Escenas Romanticas quietly on the bedside speakers.  The iPod was timed for 30 minutes.  I am usually asleep within 2 or 3 minutes at most.  I sleep very deeply indeed as a rule.  But not last night.  The first 30 minutes came and went.  The last of the music faded into the distant past and still I was awake.  And then I was asleep.  At 0200 I woke from a dream.  Got up for a few minutes to clear my head and went back to bed and sleep. Then I had a bizarre sequence of dreams, apparently in real time, involving a journey with Gaz to see family and which involved me buying a scooter because we couldn't get a taxi, a drunken driver on the pavement, police, stolen scooter and many more things I've forgotten already.  It went on and on (just like this posting!).  Each time I woke and went back to sleep the dream resumed.  Or did it?  Did I wake up?  And then at 0400 I was wide awake again.  This time there was no return to sleep.  I decided against getting up but put on Brahms' Fourth Symphony.  Eventually I drifted into a sort of sleep but was woken by more dreams just after 0600 and gave up bed for the night.

Life can be such a puzzle.  But now I am reassured again.  It's a grey, wet morning.  The birds have been fed and all's well with the world.

The Virtue of Getting Up Early

I mentioned, en passant, in an email to Pat that various things had happened since I'd risen at 0551. Her reply included the rejoinder "What is virtuous about getting up in the middle of the night?".

Now I (and I'm not alone 'cos CJ is the same) don't regard that as the middle of the night - certainly not when the hours of daylight are so long in the summer in the Hebrides. However it made me realise what a very good question Pat had posed. I hadn't consciously meant to imply that I was being virtuous as such, simply that I had been up for a long time. However there is no doubt that those of us who rise early (and go to bed late as well!) do feel virtuous. In reality I don't suppose that we are although I'm sure that after a reading of the Good Book and consideration of the (now) Seven Deadly Sins I'm sure that, as Archie and Mehitabel's fly would have said "i could have made out a case for myself too if i had had a better line of talk."

Oddly enough although I don't feel any need to comment more on virtuosity (or is it virtuousness?) I now feel the need to explain why I get up so early. My Mum's natural bedtime was 0220. Why? I don't know although she liked the peace and quiet of the night to read and study. Those are two desires with which I've never been afflicted so I can't claim that. However I've never needed much sleep and when I do put my head on the pillow I usually sleep extremely soundly for up to 5 hours. As a rule when I wake I rise immediately although I confess that that's getting less the case as I grow older (and, for some reason, I don't rise straight away when I'm in New Zealand).

When I worked I 'needed' the time to do all the things I had to fit into the day. Now that I'm retired I need the time to do all the things that I want to fit into the day. So no change there then apart from the fact that I don't actually have to do very much that I don't want to do. Life is good. I enjoy it very much. I want as much of it as I can have and whilst I'm still able to do the things I want to do. Those things are not done alone in bed. It's a personal thing.

So I'll try not to tell people when I got up in future and, if I do, please understand that I'm not trying to be virtuous. Unless, of course, I have that smug smile of virtuousness on may face.