soma.

I need to know how people get used to "day is night!' "night is day!" 12 hour rotating night shifts. Because my little 0700-1930 shifter soul is just getting violently beaten to death.

I"m up now and facing another 12 hour shift after a completely unrefreshing nap/sleep/what in hell was that REM stage of sleep ?!. I feel awake and alert enough to be watching t.v., as long as someone provides me with the channel to watch, and a beer, and doesn't mind if I fall asleep in front of the t.v. for five hours.

I'm not so sure about going in and assessing patients, passing their meds, and keeping them safe all night long.

I mean, yes, it will happen, but how do people mess with nature this way and claim to like night shift?!

I can grock the liking night shift--because it is a pretty cool shift. No docs, no med students clogging up the corridors with their pointless, eager, uh, pointlessness; no nursing students to coddle while you watch your patients hopefully not go down the tubes. Just you and 4-6 other crazy patients!

I can get how some people would think this is fun, and I like the change of pace, and the demystifing just What Happens During Night Shift. (Sort of like when you were a kid, and believed your teachers lived in the Teacher's Lounge, but you were never really sure what went on in there, and had some vague suspicion it wasn't always kosher. I still like to believe my teacher's living the Teacher's Lounge, by the way--the nice good, kosher version--it's just an easier compartamentalization that way.)

But my sleep hygiene! Which okay, was never particularly fabulous. It's all shot to hell now. And do I have to go around feeling like a punchy zombie for the days I have off, half human, half cyborg? Do people just forget about day time altogether when they work nights, and stay up all night watching Jennifer Tilly and Glenn Close attempt to murder their lovers on late night movies from the eighties? Isn't that kind of an unhealthy thing to keep watching, night after night?

I'm going to pretend I am a sleep/social experiment. Maybe I can at least get some good beat poetry out of the ordeal. And maybe I'll start having religious visions. That might be fun, as well as completely terrifying.