Trouble Sleeping

I've been having trouble sleeping lately. Usually I remedy this by watching several hours of Animal Planet while trying to fall asleep. This is the safest way to channel the energy and try to calm down. Tonight, I watched the Kennedy Center Honors and did laundry. No soothing Animal Cops Houston, no badass Charles Jantzen or Christine Kendrick. Instead, I've been hitting up Facebook pages and blogs like there is no tomorrow and posting spazzy things, about crap like feeeeelings (sorry Alex, that facebook comment is out of CONTROL!!)

I'm not sure why I can't sleep. I told Jamaal I feel thrashy, anxious, sad and lonely when I lie in bed. It's kind of pathetic. What I should really do is just listen to my iPod or breathe deeply or count sheep or some shit but instead I lie in bed and think and think and think and I can't stop thinking, and I always think about sad and bad things for some reason. I don't know - maybe my job is starting to get to me? Maybe that is it. Maybe.

I mean I don't meet a lot of the patients I enter into my database, but the world being all wired an internet-ed now, I do manage to track down a lot of personal information about them. Ok, don't get me wrong, I do NOT google patients EVER unless I suspect they are dead but have no record of their death in the social security database or medical record, because I look there first. A lot of times I'll get a short paragraph of an obit if they've died, but recently, I've read such personal things. I found one woman's blog, one woman who I'd really been mentally fighting for, one woman who overcame so many bouts of lymphoma just to bounce back every time. Other work had taken me away from following "my" patients for a while and I recently had to do some followup and came across her name. She had been in remission a year ago, and doing so well, and I was jarred to find her date of death in her medical record. What had happened? She ended up dying from complications of an allogeneic transplant, and it had been a long drawn-out illness, though she was not mentally present for the end, as a weird sort of encephalitis had made her mind wander far far away, to Indonesia, to China, as her husband wrote on her blog. He wrote about her dying too, in their house in Maine, on a dark and stormy night that knocked out their electricity, so she was surrounded by candles. I saw her pictures on the blog, I saw her kids, I felt almost as if I knew her.

It's really too much. It's way to personal. I can't know these things. It's hard enough reading the full page obits. While I hope I am written about as fondly as some of my patients are, I have a hard time getting through them - maybe because I knew how hard they were fighting to stay on top of their disease and to know that in the end they lost - it's so disappointing. I feel as though we failed, even though we really didn't, the hospital did all they could, it's bodies that surrender to illness, I feel the failure. Lately I guess I've had a hard time feeling the victory, which in truth far outweighs the failure. Maybe I am just in that annual state of slight depression that always surrounds New Year's, the passing of another year and remembering all that passed with it?
I don't know. I guess I need to stop googling my dead patients.

I also feel sad about Kenya. I don't know why. I worry about my friends there. Then I worry I'll never see it again. Then I get really really fucking sad. Why would I think this? WHY? There is no reason for me to think I'll never see Kenya again. I'm healthy, I'm young, and I'm marrying a guy with a very healthy sense of adventure and a penchant for making his lady happy. Why would a normal person even worry about never seeing a place that's not home again? I seriously wonder what's wrong with me sometimes when I think about it. I feel this sick feeling - like homesickness but not really because it's not my place. Then I get angry with myself for falling in love with Africa. Why didn't I fall in love with some place accessible, like effing British Columbia? Dammit emotions, dammit.

So that's the sad. The anxious. I have no idea. I'm not too much of an anxious person normally, but lately I've been feeling the gray hairs sprouting on my head. WTF am I anxious about? I don't care enough about work to be worrying about it, and honestly the economy isn't exactly keeping me up all night, because I still make the same crap pay that I made last year and have the same crap bills, plus $600 in loan payment each month, but what are you going to do? It's just life. Actually in a way it's reassuring to know that I can literally pay away more than I make in a week to just student loans and still remain fairly financially solvent. So that's not it. My boss asked me if I'm anxious about the wedding. It's too far away, it's too unplanned to worry about. Who knows. Maybe I'll find the underlying cause one of these days.

The lonely part is by far the most sad and pathetic and I don't even know if I want to write about it. I just lie there in an empty bed and feel this awful sense of singleness and aloneness and coldness. Lots of nesses. It's weird - I get along really well with my family- it's not like where four planets in the solar system, orbiting and trying to avoid each other, we seek out each other's company. Why do I feel this way at night when everyone's asleep (well not Amy, because she is awake and on her new sexy Mac) and I'm lying in bed trying to fall asleep. I guess this is Jamaal's fault. I feel best and most relaxed and happy and not sad/anxious/depressed/thrashy/insomniac when I am lying next to him. I know that sounds uber pathetic and very teen girl and shit, but I can't help it, it's true. It's been nearly four years of dating, I'm starting to need him more (oh SAD SAD female) and dammit, I just want to get into bed with him and fall asleep and feel at peace. Oh, plus I'm cold ha ha ha. I'm serious. I need the warmth.

Thrashy? I don't know why I'm thrashy. Probably just bored.

Humph. I think this may have been a therapeutic post. I wonder if I'll sleep easier tonight.....
Gotta go check the clothes dryer though.
Good night all three of my readers in blogland. Mad love.