I can't really sleep and I have to get up for work tomorrow.  A mountain of a day.  Smaller team but the number of patients more or less stays the same. 

I'm a little more tired after just scrolling through dumb twitter posts and reading the news.  I looked up some DIY lighting projects that seem like something I could take up.  I was a biochem major in college and took some extra physics courses.  Maybe I can pretend I'm an electrical engineer.

Now I feel like my eyes are tired but I could be up all night thinking, which comes close to happening pretty often.  I will go to bed, lay down, be tired, I'll close my eyes, but I just can't stop thinking.  It's not so much my mind racing, but just being active and going from thought to thought.  I'm jealous of people who say they fall asleep right away, I've never been able to do that.  I just think and think and open my eyes to look at the clock on my nightstand, calculating how much time I'll have to rest.

Sometimes I just can't sleep and I spend most of the night tossing and turning, blankets on and off.  I say to myself "well, sometimes you'll be up working 30 hours without sleep, and you get through it just fine.  You're in your own bed and you can get through the next day."  I've considered seeing a doctor about sleep aids, but I think I really need to get to the root of this problem instead of just have some kind of temporary treatment that might not even help.

One of the things I actually thing is undertreated is insomnia and disturbed sleep in hospitalized patients.  Hospitals are noisy, you get your vitals taken around the clock, then your medications given, then all kinds of teams seeing you at different times, putting stethoscopes on you and poking and pressing on you.  The stress state of being a patient is bad already, and losing sleep just worsens every noxious aspect of being the hospital. 

I was hospitalized last year for an asthma exacerbation late at night.  The feeling is awful, it feels like panic and terror and nothing can help you besides nebulizers and steroids which no one just keeps around the house.  It almost feels like someone is strangling you from inside your throat and lungs.  It was scarier as a kid and the smell of nebulized medicine and plastic facemasks is one of those memories cemented in my mind. 

I couldn't sleep in the hospital because I needed my breathing treatments to keep running and just having this air blow into you to open you back up is by default uncomfortable.  I was hungry, thirsty, a little agitated from being up all night and probably a little irritable from the nebulizer itself and having the mask stuck on my face for hours.  I had some attitude towards my nurse and felt guilty about it. 
 
I guess there's just a lot keeping me up and I'm not really about to wake anyone else up with texts or anything.  The bed is even my favorite possession and place to be, soft, quiet, and still. 

I've tried just about every trick to fall asleep: get out of bed and do a task or read, counting backwards, counting sheep (I guess that's a real thing.  I've only really heard TV characters talk about doing that), progressive muscle relaxation, special playlists to fall asleep to, thinking of absolutely nothing and just focus on my breathing, tea, sitting at my computer writing, just keeping my eyes open in the darkness and waiting for my eyes to get tired, and so on.  I use blue light filters on my phone and minimize all light 1-2 hours before going to sleep.  I have a sleep hygiene app on my Apple watch, which basically tells me I'm restless and not meeting my sleep goals.  I've even tried going to sleep immediately after getting home to readjust my internal clock, but that hasn't really helped either. 

I feel like after today I'd just pass out on the couch, but I just feel so restless, kind of restless but also detached and numb, and spent.  I'll just make some extra coffee with me tomorrow.  I usually will drink a cup of coffee the moment I wake up so it'll start having its effect when I get to my car.  I guess my second most favorite possession is this Zojirushi thermos.  Besides the cool name it does a good job of keeping things warm in the winter. 

I think I'm finally getting tired and less coherent.  Going to put on my metamorphical climbing gear for that mountain tomorrow.