I fantasize about sleep.   I count days and hours until I can sleep.  I roll over in bed and think either this time tomorrow I’ll be sleeping or this time tomorrow I’ll be awake.    I have to get up for work some time between say 4:10 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. four mornings a week.  One of the effects of the condition I have is supposed to be fatigue.  However,   my doctors say with the hours I keep, who can tell?  I see their heads nod and eye droop when I describe my hours and my schedule.  They say anyone would be fatigued given that schedule.  And I am getting older.  It’s just a fact.  I have read that as we age, we need less sleep.  NOT!  Ok, so maybe we don’t need it to grow, that doesn’t mean our bodies and minds don’t want it.

I keep memories of a good sleep like notes on a good bottle of wine.  I still remember the sweet deepness of sleep the night of Hurricane Sandy.  I had one almost as good the night of a blizzard last month.

I guard my sleep ferociously.

I have been to the office only three times this month.  Yes, a few hours more sleep but much less walking.  Here’s my vicious cycle, the less I walk, the less I am able to walk.   We have been trying to compensate by having me do the stepper every night but still I have been coming in at most around 5,000 steps.  A normal day for me at work is over 7,000 and I used to get to 10,000 or more.    I did go into work this past Thursday and could barely walk.  It was bad.  My husband doesn’t understand that I just can’t stop when I am working remotely and do 15 minutes on the stepper. Plus, it’s not the same as walking.  I have tried to get in 30 active minutes a day.

Yesterday, we set up the treadmill upstairs.  My plan is to go on it in the morning when I drink my coffee.  We’ll see.    Yesterday I struggled to do 5 minutes on it.  My goal for today is 6 minutes.

Confession – I have been lax with my PT exercises.  I was really on it for awhile and then it just started fading away.  I was doing abs every night and then I fell.  It hurt too much.  I am hoping to start again this evening.

Cut to last night.  3:50 a.m.  Husband gets up.  “I have been thinking and I have decided”.  This is when I call him Jack because he sounds just like his father.  ” You know I dream things through, you know how I used to help you with your exercises?  Well, I really can’t now because of the operation”.  Then he went through all the exercises I am supposed to do and what he could or could not do.  Told me I couldn’t do 10,000 steps today as I had only done 3500 yesterday but I would do 6000 today.  I would do the PT twice on weekends but not during the week as I certainly can’t get up before 4.  And maybe, he will create a spreadsheet to track everything.  Now I know he’s talking in his sleep because spreadsheet is not a word he uses.  He has the remarkable ability to have complete literate conversations when he is completely asleep.   And I am looking at the clock thinking “this time tomorrow I will have 20 minutes more to sleep”.  I can’t hit him because of the operation.  I drifted off.  This morning he has a vague recollection of the whole thing but says it goes to show I am always thinking about you.