Whereas months ago I often was going to bed after midnight, even as late as 2 a.m., I have managed to ratchet that back to approximately 11 p.m., and was hopeful that I would get a decent amount of sleep Friday night, pursuant to working on Saturday for the first time since early July.
I retired at 9 a.m. and lay awake until 11 p.m., as expected, but then was also awake at midnight, and 1 a.m. and so forth. It seemed as if I had been asleep for ten minutes when the alarm went off at 4:55 a.m.
I just remembered that Friday, the day before work day, was a very horrible day, thanks to Marvin and his new medication-refusal protocol. I ended up getting way behind schedule and therefore in a giant rush. I had meant to take a comprehensive shower before seeing my ob/gyn for an annual exam, but it ended up being just a quick rinse, and I had meant to ride my bike over there but ended up in a cab and in a mega rage.
Fortunately, it turns out that being in a mega rage is excellent for one’s blood pressure. Mine was 100/48. I shudder to think how low it might have been had I stayed calm.
I of course went off to work as scheduled on Saturday and I made it through the day and generally enjoyed it, but did not feel rested on Sunday morning even after sleeping for a good, long time. If excellent self-care, including top-notch sleep hygiene, is the goal, I must let go of this job. I missed so much sleep during my parents’ illnesses, I feel it is imperative not to mess around with sleep from now on, particularly since one of my parents did have dementia.
Yesterday (Sunday), I changed the filter in my Multipure water filter and ended up running out of time to go grocery shopping, but it appeared that I would be able to do that today, which is not ideal, but it’s okay. I would like to have had a nice salad for breakfast this morning. (As it turned out, no grocery shopping today, either.)
I emailed the cat transport person to let him know I am unable to reliably get medication into Marvin and that his vet has suggested something that didn’t work in the past (which is not even due to arrive until Wednesday). I asked what the latest go-no go day would be, and he suggested September 4. He added, “Sounds like we have a lot of great irons in the fire!” Irritating. When Lisa M. and I spoke on the phone yesterday evening, I told her it’s not that I’m totally opposed to positive thinking; I am opposed to a complete disconnection from reality. I pictured myself on the plane with this fellow saying, “Listen, sonny, if you can’t say something negative, just don’t say anything at all.”
Sayadaw U Tejaniya writes that curiosity about what is happening in our mind is itself a form of wisdom. Yesterday I was sitting at my computer and observing my thoughts. SUT doesn’t necessarily advocate noting; in fact, he says it is not necessary, but in my weakened mental health condition, I think it’s probably helpful. “Gloomy thought.” “Gloomy prediction.”
Howie sometimes quotes the Hafiz poem “You Carry All the Ingredients.”
It starts:
You carry all the ingredients
to turn your life into a nightmare—
Don’t mix them!
It ends:
You carry all the ingredients within
to turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix them!
I have had many opportunities in recent months to observe the exceedingly short time from “What if this happens?” to “I’m just going to kill myself.” It’s about two seconds.
So I was observing my thoughts as I sat at the computer yesterday and could easily see how negative and destructive they were, and I could feel agitation churning in my body, and I could feel how unpleasant that is, and I shot down into that dark place, anyway.
The solutions are so simple; it’s the willingness to employ them that can be so elusive. Reflecting on the matter later, I concluded that I should have paused when I could feel agitation building in my body and should have turned to a simple practice of observing and noting.
As Howie points out, once you notice you are holding your breath, you don’t have to try to convince yourself to start again. It happens by itself once you make the observation. I definitely perceive that once I consciously note, “Gloomy thought,” I don’t have to try to have a cheery thought. The current of energy shifts by itself, not necessarily to ebullient joy, a state I am very familiar with, though not very much lately, but at least the sudden descent into the darkest of moods is halted. Well, I guess that depends, as just noting gloomy thoughts was not sufficient yesterday. They were too persistent, and I did not or could not marshal the will to pause; since I did not think of that until later, I am actually hopeful that I am on the right track.
I went to bed last night shortly after 10 p.m. and was awakened by the sound of a cat vomiting at about 7:30 a.m. I leapt out of bed to try to see which cat it was: Marvin, who had thrown up two horrible little black tubes. One of them looked like a hairball but was much firmer, and the other looked like a, let’s see, horrible black tube. Blood from their bad fight two weeks ago? Marvin has been eating his food, though, now that I think about it, more slowly than usual, and of course we suddenly have this giant problem with medication.
I almost just stayed up at that point, but (good for me!) got back in bed to see if I might sleep a bit more, which I did. In fact, I couldn’t get up when the alarm went off and hit the snooze button for an additional hour, which is to say that it basically took two days to recover from one day of work, in addition to getting almost no sleep before going to work. My body seems to have just made up its mind that it does not sleep before a work day.
Before I fell soundly back to sleep this morning, with Duckworth sitting on the pillow right next to my head, when I noted a gloomy thought, I turned to a simple survey of the input at the various sense doors, a practice I was finding very powerful a year or so ago, but drifted away from. I see … I smell … I hear … I taste … I feel in my body … .
I was going to take each cat to the vet separately, one today and one next week, to confirm that their chips are working properly, but since I probably can’t give Marvin the gabapentin he needs regardless of which of them goes to the vet, I was going to cancel today’s appointment, but now of course will take him over there this afternoon with or without gabapentin, and with the specimens in a Ziploc bag.
The cat transport people have a home-visit vet they work with, so I met with her today online to get her ideas. I sent her photos of what Marvin threw up and she said one does look like it could be blood. Maybe food has somehow been passing around it because it’s kind of skinny. As for travel by air, she is concerned that even the highest dose of gabapentin will not be enough to both get Marvin into his carrier and have him remain sufficiently sedated until we land at DTW, so she proposes to use acepromazine, which is forbidden by airlines, which she proposes we will neglect to mention to them. Great. To her credit, she did say I should run this by Marvin’s own vet.
The traveling vet is available to come over and give meds on travel day and fortunately doesn’t think doing some sedation for a night or two before traveling provides any benefit, so at least I would not have to pay for three visits.
I asked what happens if he has a, what’s that word, opposite reaction to the medication; that’s not the word, but you know what I mean. She said she has not known that to happen, but agreed that we could give it to him a week before travel day to see how it goes.
However, when I spoke with my sister, she said the trouble is that something weird can happen with that medication in the context of the changed air pressure. Giving it to him in the comfort of his own living room is a different thing. The internet is uniformly opposed to using this stuff for air travel, and I’m pretty sure Marvin’s vet is not going to endorse this plan. I think I am going to have to pay the traveling vet to come over on September 9 and insert Marvin’s Prozac plus 200 mg of gabapentin into him and we’ll have to hope for the best, or I’ll have to decide not to risk that and just stay here and wait for the neighbors to burn both of our buildings down. (I think things will someday be fine in that building. I think the odds of my building literally burning down are low. But I also think things are going to get worse next door before they get better.)
While talking to my sister, I felt that agitation arising in my body, but this time, I said, “I guess that’s enough for now,” and got off the phone.
Paradoxical! That was the word.
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