Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Temazepam

heck with this Temazepam crap. See the time down there? 6:57. My alarm is set 7:30. Is that a freakin' good night's sleep? I listen to the Mets game last night. It ends. I'm tired. Little after 11. Not really sleepy but tired. So I open this Temazepam bottle - it used to be called Restoril & other names & was invented a long time ago. "One capsule at bedtime for insomnia. " But I don't know how strong it is. So I break the capsule into a old med bottle cap, scoop up about 1/2 the powder, take it, wash it down, pour the rest into the empty little bottle, get into bed, & read. Ambien kicks in after about 15 minutes. You know it's happening because the book looks weird, the letters might even float. At that stage you have about 15 minutes to take advantage of it. You put down the book, turn off the lights, & you usually fall asleep. When you don't fall asleep you get hungry. With this new stuff, 15 minutes, nothin. 30 minutes, maybe I feel a bit relaxed. Maybe. I get up & take more of the powder.

I lay back, think about stuff, my mind wanders. The fire detector in my hall starts to beep every few minutes. It's hard-wired. Does it have a battery backup? I can't reach it anyway. I roll on my side & pull a pillow over my head. I think about stuff.

I sort of sleep. But it's like I'm not quite sleeping. It more like time is passing easier. I open my eyes. I go take the rest of the powder. Big mistake maybe not taking it all at once. The fire thingie beeps. I feel comfortable at least. It is sedative for sure. I think about stuff. Time passes. I open my eyes. What time is it? Dark. I listen to traffic. Early, very early. More the next day than previous night by the sound of it. I look at clock. 4:30. Worse than I thought. Three hours to go. I get up, move the PC mouse so the monitor comes on & I get more light, very carefully open another capsule, take about 1/2 of it, go back to bed. The fire detector beeps. Call Louie, I tell myself, that has to stop, he has the key to the ladder closet & knows what to do.

I lay back, think about stuff, time passes. I admit I don't feel so anxious over NOT getting a good night's sleep. Is that what this drug does? No wonder wiki says it was an abuse drug decades ago. I never heard if it. I open my eyes. It's light out. I hear traffic, car doors opening & shutting & engines starting. I know this time on my street. It's between 6 & 7. The construction & day shift punch clock people are going to work. That's it for my night.

I get out of bed. Maybe, just maybe, I'll get a half a day before I hit the wall. Have to go to Newark. 9:30 train. The doctor will have no good news. They'll change my catheter. This used to be a simple matter. Not pleasant, but simple. Some nurses & assistants are real good at it, fast, confident. My urethra is sore now. This doctor's assistants, though they must be very experienced, are not so great at it. & I'm no longer a hopeful, cooperative patient. I'm angry & disappointed & frightened. I'll take some ibuprofen before I leave. I wish I could go to the ER nurse at Trinitas with the Brit accent who called me "love." She was a great urban hospital ER nurse. I watched her for a few hours. I hope they pay her really well. I wish someone was driving me. Gina. But she has her own work to do. She's there if I really need her. Even better, my sister, who knows how scared I get. She'll be shocked to see me now, after a few years of not being around each other. & I feel badly because she's doing happy things right now & I'm waving & going, "Hey!"

Ambien is better, Much better. Take 1/2, you're really asleep for about two hours. If you were sleepy, you wake up, then go back to sleep. Otherwise, you take the other 1/2. A guaranteed four hours of good sleep. I don't like time release. I can't horde that. I can't renew my Ambien until the 23rd. I almost always have extra Ambien in the bathroom cabinet. But I missed a regular appt with the shrink over winter, more than one in fact, bad weather, & went through the overstock plus the one time refill. What I didn't know then but know now is that he does renew prescriptions by phone with pharmacies. But I didn't have his personal office number, just the one of his assistant who schedules appts.

Temazepam is related to Librium. A doctor once gave me a single librium, told me to go home & go to sleep. I took half of it & had a great sleep. This class of drug is said to increase light sleep over deep sleep, but last night was a rather extreme example of that. It was like never quite going to sleep. The only difference was that I wasn't tossing, turning, & getting aggravated. I guess that's something.

Comments:
I take an over the counter generic form of Sominex for sleeping, when I don't just fall into bed after a night of drinking. I can't sleep either, without an aid, except my aids are either booze or like I said, the over the counter drug.

As for the morning sounds, same here. If I wake up too early, it is sometimes hard to go back to sleep, except I can't take anything because I have to go to work. Around seven the honking starts because at the corner there is a no left turn from 7 to 9 a.m. and there are always idiots that can't read the sign or refuse to acknowledge it, so all the cars behind start honking. Same with the car doors opening and closing, as there is no parking and the street is right outside my window, so people are usually moving their cars around 7 a.m.

And don't even get me started on the construction! The building that burned next door has been undergoing the rebuilding for about a year now (almost complete), but the commercial building right out in front of my kitchen, is building an 8 foot tall wall on the roof, and although I don't mind the construction part, I am pissed that it now completely blocks my view out my window. All I see is the damn wall, not all the trees and tops of houses for miles away. That really sucks.
 
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