Sleep, or lack thereof

I'm writing this post more to kill time than anything else. I had my worst sleep-night last night probably ever in the hospital, and possibly even out. I had been given back the roommate I shared my first 5 hours here with. An older Greek woman with a devoted son who sits by her side all day. The nurses first description of her was "quiet". I quickly learned, from chatting with her son and from listening that the one thing that was for sure, is that they were a super nice family.

Nighttime was a night-mare. I was scheduled to complete the oh-so-fun overnight oximetry last night and knew that in order for that to work out, things would have to be pretty perfect in a shared room. Even on my own, the overnight oximetry always finds me up at least twice to pee, meaning a strategic jet to the bathroom during the 55 second allowance you get for being detached to the finger probe. For the record, I never make it back in time and the ward gets graced with the ambulance-like alarm.

Mrs Quiet was being given Lasix, and apparently it was ordered rather late and the nurse anticipated a lot of peeing that night from Mrs Q. That would normally be alright except that Mrs Q only uses a bedpan, AND struggles with both buzzing the nurse on her own, and speaking English. After several hours early-on of watching how this played out (a pee an hour, roughly, with me being designated buzzer whenever I heard *greek mumblings* "Pee pee!!") I realized tonight I was going to forfeit the oximetry before it even started. Excellent choice on my part. I got about an hours sleep and woke as flustered as it gets.

Fast-forward to later, when my lack of napping led me to my peak of grumpy insanity and I lashed out when I saw another patient (who, by the way, buzzes every half hour ALL night and was moving from the room across from me) get transferred to her very own room. I asked the nurse angrily, "why does SHE get her own room" and got a whispered "she's very sick" to my immediate embarassment. I knew this. I called her back and apologized and swore my heartlessness was from the lack of sleep.

Now here I sit, on the following night's early hours of the morning, unable to close my eyes again because at 1030 I conked out and slept soundly for several hours. I was unable to make it to even my husbands arriving-home-from-work time. Unable to chat and play online poker with him till 2am like usual. Mrs Q is snoring like a champ, and short of a bedpan "run" a few hours ago, has slept like this virtually all day. As frustrating as it is to be awake right now, I'm still so grateful to anticipate the end of evil-noheart-me. At least for now. Ha.