tired of being tired

When I said last post that night shift was the least of my problems, I probably didn't really mean that.

What I meant was, "It's a big problem, but not as big a problem as being dead (like my patient.)"

I'm trying to experiment with Ways of Dealing, like Sleeping When I'm Tired (difficult, because I'm always tired) and Pretending Night Shift Is Like A Form of Camp (yeah, like Camp Sleep Torture).

I think I feel today like I'm tapping on my reserves. Whereas the first week I couldn't sleep during the day (and ended up exhausted) my problem now is that I can't cycle back to sleeping during the nights on my days off, or do so inefficiently. I haven't slept decently in three weeks! I'm tired all the time and have to resort to exclamation marks to spice up my writing, because I can no longer think properly!

Now I sleep during the day, the evening, everything but at night when I'm supposed to, like the good God-fearing woman that I am. Instead, I wake up from my "night time" nap, if I'm lucky, thinking, "My God, what is this unnaturalness?!"

Or I come home from work to this pleasant permutation: sleep, get up, force myself to mingle with the Living for a few hours, then come back home, and wonder what to do with myself until 3a.m., or sometimes 7a.m., when I am finally at that brink of exhaustion which means I must sleep the entire rest of the day away.

When I finally get up and walk the dog, I envy the normal people with their normal schedules, who are all going home now, because it is 5p.m., and that's what people are supposed to do. I have a feeling this Work Shift Envy is going to multiply exponentially as the months go by, until I'm finally caught outside someone's ground level condo window, gazing in rapturously at those lucky people watching the evening news and eating dinner and getting ready for bed at 8p.m., rather than just waking up for a greuling 12 hour overnight shift.

Meanwhile, my internal clock, which was never quite programmed right for healthy sleep any way, is screeching all sorts of alarms like, "This is bad for you! BAD!"

I can tell I'm starting to lose functionality when I am awake, too. I'm clumsier, and my capacity to think quickly (which, you know, is a charming feature in critical care hospital work) is dulled. Mostly, I'm jonesing for a good night's sleep, or at least not try to program myself to be awake when I'm supposed to be sleeping, which is exactly what night shift does to a person.

Add forcing yourself to be awake all night to a neurosis about trying to get to sleep, and watch me progress into the same cranky, constantly sleep deprived wretch I was during the last assignment.

Because yeah, while sleeping during the day seems to be coming slightly easier than it did last time (in large part due to the Pharmaceutical Wonders Available In Our Modern Era), I can't pretend that it's not been three weeks since the last time I slept in an initial stretch longer than four hours, and did not wake up every hour or more from that period on, confused, wondering if it was still today, or did I sleep through both tomorrow and today, which is now actually yesterday?

How do people on submarines survive without killing each other, I wonder?

And all for what? Two hundred dollars more per paycheck? My next paycheck looks sweet, due to weekend and nights premium (and a holiday, too!) until you rip away the taxes, insurance, and all kinds of Working For the Man goodies, and then you just want to boycott working ever again, especially when rent sucks up most of one of your paychecks.

I must also add: I don't think being sleep deprived, on top of being new, is good for my patients. The nature of my job forces me to be quick-thinking and acting, and how can I do that if I'm not sleeping properly?!

I'm talking (writing) myself into tiredness, here, and I have two more shifts to go this week. (It also sucks that they scheduled me three on, two off, three on. My saving grace is that I then have a long stretch of days off afterward, but I must say, these next two days are going to kick my poor little sleep deprived ass.)