It’s a Dog’s Life 49

Nightshift- day(?) 1 , I start at 19:00 but I’m on “normal” time so although I try to sleep late I’m up before 9 (awake about 7). There’s a vague theory about trying to catch a couple more hours kip “later” , but boys come back from work/school, and some small housework needs doing, and a bit of exercise and fresh air (’cause I’ll be inside for several days). I need to leave about 18:00 and by 17:00 it seems like folly to even try, so another coffee appears a better bet then off to work.

Day(?) 2- I finish at 7 get home by 8 , I have been awake 25 hours and am legitmately tired, but the first day of turning your life around is always hard. Of course I have had to “wake up” for the drive home, and, although fading, am quite alert when I get home, plus my body is saying it’s “breakfast and wake up time”. I wind down with a cup of tea and a slice of toast, go to bed at 09:00 (house empty, phone off).

I wake up at 1 (13:00), Bing! wide awake, I’m not really sure why. Volume is on full inside my head, and life is in technicolour. Not engaging seems impossible. I shamble around thinking that I need to sleep more to face another 12 hour shift. The caffine from last nights multiple coffees is telling me no. I resit the temptation to dress and go for a walk in daylight, and at 15:00 go back and lie down, (Brain is On).By 16:00 I give up have another coffee, breakfast, walk to shops, pack and leave. I am already yawning by arrival at 18:45.

By 03:00 (now alone) I am sticking pencils in my eyes. I have several coffee’s to face the long drive home (windows down, radio on full blare). I stagger to bed.

Day(?) 3. This is a later start (23:00) so I am less disturbed when I awake again at 1, knowing there is more time to grab 20 winks (or at least 10). However efforts to engage are minimised and my limited communication seen as anti social. I eat breakfast (possibly yesterdays breakfast). at tea time, and go out for breath of air. I come back, lie down , and am out cold in seconds, but wake (WIDE AWAKE) in exactly one hour (to no particular external stimulous), I spend about another hour trying (MUST SLEEP!) and then give up, have todays breakfast/lunch/supper and get ready to leave.

Sometimes nightshift is as much about, “how long since you last slept?” as it is about “how much sleep have you had”. I am ok till about 4, when a lot more coffee is required, and I stab myself with my fountain pen intermitently to stay alert. I drive home very slowly, constantly refocussing. Look there’s my bed……

Day(?) 4 I am off and am now trying to move “back” towards “day-time” – I am working normally (7am) soon. Also – as this nightshift is unexpected cover for a colleague- I had already arranged to do something today. Normal plan is to set an alarm for lunch, get up and engage as normally as possible, with the goal of being tired tonight.

When the “Alarm” goes off, I leap out of bed and start dressing and moving (Go Go Go), feeling not rested at all, only after I am half way to the kitchen does it clarify that it is not my alarm at all, but a missed call (I neglected to silence my phone). I have been alseep about an hour. I stare stupidy at the caller ID (bloody life insurance or something), block the number and slowly return to bed, except that a text comes in (phone in my hand) from Youngest son, who has forgotten the appointment letter on the fridge and needs. to know where he is going at the hospital, I rise again, send a photo, return to bed (again), when my alarm goes off (30 seconds later it seems), all my go, go, go, has gone, gone, gone.

I make my event on Monday, I am on time but leave early, yawning. When I get home my body says it is breakfast time (I think I have had this meal 5 times in 3 days), I resist and retire where I am awake -in my “day” period – till after 2. On Tuesday I could sleep late, but I start at 7am on Wednesay so I want to be tired by Tuesday night. Instead I am tired Tuesday day, and wide awake at bed time….

Many will point to my error of not silencing my phone, although the sleep deficit was already pretty high by that point, and this sequence does not feature, “Insistant delivery man” , “traffic stopped right outside the window with bass at volume 11” , or that old classic “unloading a lorry of scaffolding poles across the street”, none of which are particularly inhibited by earplugs.

My work colleagues, nursing friends, and other rolling shifters, will, I’m sure recognise much of this, although we (“the order of the waking dead”) generally hold, that “normal people” do not understand at all, I hope I have given you a small glimpse of “our” world.

Next week in IaDL : COP that! What it’s like working in the city with 100 world leaders.