I haven’t been sleeping very well lately. About a week ago, I was at a doctor’s office to discuss a medication I was taking, and it was eventually decided I would come off this medication and start on a different one.
Unfortunately, there are withdrawal symptoms I need to deal with, and though I feel like I’m handling the headaches and the flu-like issues fairly well, the fatigue and insomnia are another matter.
Since I have started switching medications, my nights in bed are experiences I both desire and dread. I wake up every two hours almost exactly. It doesn’t matter when I fall asleep. If I go to bed at midnight, I’m up at two a.m. Sometimes I go to bed as early as nine, hoping that will help, but I’m up at 11 like clockwork.
I usually feel sick and queasy when I wake up, and that means I’m usually just getting up to take a Tums and hope my stomach will settle enough for me to rest. Of course I will, but of course I’m up in another 120 minutes.
The worst is when I wake up in the early morning. If it’s any time after four, my brain immediately goes into work mode. I know logically that I have hours before I actually have to be at the office, but my brain doesn’t see it that way. It’s like I’m already there (though I’d probably cause a stir if I showed up in my pajamas), already thinking about all the things I need to accomplish and trying to plan out how best to tackle all the tasks before me. I don’t end up falling asleep again after this. The best I can do is lay in bed for another hour or two until I glance at the clock and it at least seems like an acceptable time to get out of bed. Of course, the moment I do, the more I wish I had stayed in bed. My fatigue can be so strong that in the evening, I’m so tired that I start to relish the idea of getting to go to bed. And then the cycle begins anew.
This morning, while laying awake and praying for the energy to wake up and plow through the day to just flow through me, I remembered one of my favourite songs from the Barenaked Ladies, Who Needs Sleep. The infectiously peppy chorus involves the band singing, “Who needs sleep? / Well, you’re never going to get it / Who needs sleep? / Tell me what’s that for / Who needs sleep? / Be happy with what you’re getting, there’s a guy who’s been awake since the Second World War.”
It’s funny that those lyrics came to mind so close to Remembrance Day. I’ve been spending some time lately going through old copies of the newspaper, looking at the stories covering various veterans and what they experienced. It seems like most of the veterans who were from the Canora area have already been interviewed or have unfortunately passed on, so it’s a requirement for me to look back through the paper’s archives to see what I can find out about the wars.
I think the think I’ve most noticed this time around is how much more lasting the mental damage is to these veterans. Reading through these stories, I get chills. I can see that even when physical scars have healed, the memories of the battles these soldiers went through are far more piercing than any piece of shrapnel.
I read about soldiers who were suffering anxiety and would experience a panic attack at the first mention of the war. So many of them mentioned how a certain memory – of a friend dying near them, of their first experiences in battle, of near-death experiences that were miraculously survived – haunts them to this day. How many soldiers have you heard of with post-traumatic stress disorder, with depression, with any number of mental illnesses thanks to what they were forced to go through during the war?
There probably is some poor veteran who’s been awake since the Second World War. There have probably been several who suffered insomnia and night terrors based on battles. My complaints about a few weeks of poor sleep is definitely put in perspective by that realization.
I think that’s what I most need to remember this Remembrance Day. That no matter what problems I have going through my day-to-day life, I am here having these problems instead of far more drastic ones because there are people who fight and have fought for peace in this country. I may have some insomnia, but I have a phone to call my doctor, I have a bed to lay in to try to sleep, and I have an apartment to pace around in when I can’t. In war-torn countries across the planet, some don’t even have that. I have what I do now thanks in part to the efforts of soldiers who fought in the world wars, and who continue fighting for peace in places like Afghanistan. I think that’s what I’ll have to remember.
Even if Remembrance Day is a chance to sleep in, it’s a chance I have thanks to thousands of brave men and women.
