Last night, I woke up three times. One time I figured, well, let’s see what’s going on in the news. (Nothing good, I can assure you.) The second time I did some work:  checked the financials; cleared some emails; reviewed the latest stats on a poll I’ve been following. The third time, I may have woken up simply to check the time: 5:50 a.m. Oh:  progress.

I wish I could say this isn’t typical. It’s been going on for decades.

My son, meanwhile, a strapping 19-year-old, assures me that once he’s asleep, he stays asleep. To his credit, he sounded more factual than boastful. I told him, “Check back in with me when you’re in your 50s.” Then I destroyed him in a game of 500 Rummy. I think the last time I slept a full night through was while Jimmy Carter was in office. (Through no credit to him.)

I cleared my schedule for today so I could go get a medical procedure. It was simply a test, although they kept calling it, shudderingly, “surgery.” They asked if I’d ever had surgery before, and I said no. Not even a colonoscopy? Oh, sure, I said, I’ve had one of those. Well, evidently, that’s “surgery” as well. The things you learn. I had always associated surgery with getting cut open. Now I think surgery is whatever they decide to call it when they can charge more.

This “surgery,” in which they’d take nice bright photos of a generous portion of my insides — without, as noted, slicing me up with a knife — required knocking me out. I don’t know how long they were videoing my interior, but to me the procedure worked like this:  one moment speaking to the doctor and the nurse, and the nurse saying that, okay, the anesthesia was starting intravenously, and the next instant my awakening to the proclamation that it was all over. I stumbled my way over to the restroom — no, thank you, I don’t need a wheelchair, for chrissake! — and then after that, stumbling my way out the door of the surgery center. (And, no, dammit, I don’t need a wheelchair for this either!)

Then I took my son, who nicely drove me to this procedure and waited around while people violated my personal core, out to lunch. Well, his lunch, my breakfast, my having been on orders not to eat or drink since the previous night.

After that — a great big breakfast for me, with eggs scrambled in diced ham, an invasion-sized pancake, a huge cup of water and  two cups of glorious coffee, I went home. And crashed. Because to some degree I was still anesthetized.

I woke up hours and hours later. Feeling completely refreshed!

Oh: This must be what it feels like to feel rested.

So now I’m wondering how I might go about getting more non-surgical surgery. Clearly what is needed in my case is anesthesia.  I’ve had a sleep disorder for decades, and have tried absolutely everything — but no one told me about the wonders of anesthesia! Mind you, I don’t want any maladies that actually require surgery (duh) and I’d rather avoid the trouble of going to that surgery center all the time, and I can do without the very pretty pink photos of my insides, attractive thought they may be. But if you know someone who can come over even just twice a month and anesthetize me, please let me know.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2021 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.