My Eyes Are On Fire...

So last night I made the switch from ambien to trazadone. Both are sleeping medications...but since I spent a signficant amount of time on the phone to my Mom and Chris one night last week because I was having ambien induced hallucinations...and since I took up the fun nighttime sport of sleep walking while staying with Hayley last week...I thought perhaps I should bid ambien adieu and try something that was less likely to send me to a psych ward or the emergency room (check out this NY Times Article about Ambien thanks to Cathy for sending it to me today--http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/business/08ambien.html?_r=1&oref=slogin).

You'd think that would be the wise choice. Ha! I could have sipped dirty toilet water for all the effect the trazadone had on me last night. As a matter of fact, I was up every 20 minutes or so all night long. Hence the burning eyes and legs that feel as if they've been stomped on by a whole host of midgets that decided to take up clogging...on my body.

In my state of mindnumbing tiredness last night I also couldn't remember if I'd taken a second trazadone during one of my 38 times getting up and out of bed or if I'd only thought about taking a second one. And since I really didn't want my heart to stop beating...I decided against taking a second/third one. Not that I know that my heart would have stopped beating...but I've seen enough after school specials that I know there's a fine line between going to sleep and never waking up when you're dealing with sleeping medications. I prefer to wake up frequently during the course of the evening than never waking up again. Thanks.

And to add to the general "no fun" of not really getting any sleep...I've had this problem in the last week or so that whenever I lay down...I have to pee every 20 minutes or so. When I'm awake and vertical I am just fine. I pee like a normal person. But let my mind decide its nap time...and my bladder decides that it can only hold about .0005 ounces of liquid...and off I go to reacquaint myself with my old friend John Porcelain. My favorite white guy.  Now...I see omens and portents all over the place. In ancient Rome I would have been one of those guys that rips the innards out of a cow and told the Emperor whether or not he should invade Gaul or have an incestuous relationship with his Mother. Instead, in this modern world of sceptics and unbelievers, I simply think that tv commercials advertising new and/or improved drugs are speaking directly to me. Hence...how I came to the conclusion that I have an enlarged prostate. Nevermind that the poor chap in the commercial had to go pee all the time whether or not he was in bed with his wife, at a baseball game, or at the office...my inner hypochondriac has decided that I have an enlarged prostate...so an enlarged prostate it is (I'm also a "survivor" of the Monkeypox, Bird Flu, West Nile, Ebola, and that not so fresh feeling).

To look at the whole situation positively, my inability to go comatose even with the help of prescription drugs allowed me to get to the office at 7am this morning. I've checked my email, written a draft of a fundraising appeal letter, searched fruitlessly for my afghan that I keep here in case of just such a sleep emergency, and thought about doing my taxes. All of that before 9am. This is why the United States is the most productive and industrious nation on earth: insomnia. I'm sure the Department of Labor is going to be tickled pink that I figured that out for them.

But now, it's time for me and my enlarged prostate to make friends with the couch in our community room. Particularly since my eyes have started watering so badly that I could ship the moisture to Kenya and end their drought in a jiffy. Perhaps I'll pass out from sheer exhaustion...and wake up to find that my enlarged prostate and the reauthorization of the U.S. Patriot Act have all been an ambien induced hallucinatory dream.