Tonight's The Night

Now I've got that song* stuck in my head, battling with the Beatles' music being piped in through the overhead speakers at the Starbucks where I sit and type on my laptop. 

As my previous posts have demonstrated, I am unable to sit at home and type on my laptop because the fatigue will quickly overtake me, convincing me of the absolute and unquestioning necessity to put my head down on the closest semi-soft surface in order to shut my eyes for "just a few minutes" which will soon become anywhere between three to six hours.  At least if I'm typing somewhere that is in public I will not attempt to take a nap.  In theory.

Tonight is the night that I try the big meds, the heavy duty sleep drugs that are too special to simply buy at my local Rite Aid but must be mailed via Fed Ex and require me to read important directions and instructions AND talk with a special nurse before I even attempt to use.  I tried it for about a week once before and it worked really well.  And then the Princess came to me in the middle of the night with a bad dream and I could barely wake up to help her.  I remember feeling like I was swimming through corn syrup to rise up to the surface in order to actually talk to her.  I decided then and there that I could NOT take any other medication like that until the kids were older.

And then I found myself out of work, home alone while everyone else in the family went to school.  And despite large to-do lists, I found myself sleeping for more hours than I was awake.  And even when I'm awake I feel like I could fall back asleep given half a chance.  I can't keep going on like this.  My doctor was willing to double the amount of daytime meds I take to see if that would help me stay awake and alert, but even that was not enough.  I don't see I really have a choice.  DH agreed to be the go-to night-time parent (if necessary) so tonight I begin the meds again.

Tonight, after I mix up enough meds for two doses and am completely ready to fall asleep, I will take the first dose.  Two hours later my alarm clock will wake me up enough for me to take the second dose. 

I know, it sounds crazy, but remembering the goal is to get me to fall asleep and get into a deep, deep sleep, apparently this is what does the trick. 
  

But that is not all.  ("Oh, no, that is not all."  Anyone else get that Cat in the Hat reference?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?)

Tonight I will also hook up my brand new fancy-schmancy heart monitor that I will then wear for the next three weeks.  I have to wait until a little before 8:00 to hook it all up since that is when the person from the monitor company is going to call me and ensure that I hooked it up correctly and turn it on (it's wireless) and test it out.  We are trying to get to the bottom of this whole extra heart beat thingy I seem to be having more and more often.  The echocardiogram was clear, so we're pretty confident it's not something medically scary, but we still need to figure out the cause.

So tonight is a big night.  I'm actually kind of excited to be moving forward on both of these issues, excited to see if the new drugs help me actually feel like I slept all night when I wake up in the morning, excited to see if the new heart monitor actually ends up recording what feels like an extra, sudden, forceful, out-of-the-blue heart beat that actually makes me simultaneously jump and gasp in surprise each and every time it happens. 

It's a big night.



* So the song I had in mind I thought was called "Tonight's the Night" but I couldn't reallly remember much more than that phrase.  I tried googling it to jog my memory of some more of the lyrics.  Do you have any IDEA how many songs have this phrase in it?!!  It took half-way through this post before I remembered that the chorus was kind of more like "Tonight, tonight, tonight, wo-oh, gonna make it right, tonight, tonight, tonight...." so I searched those lyrics only to finally discover the actual song.  I feel much better to figure out the actual song that will now be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.