What a terrible week

Kay may have had a stable week, but I've had a very bad one indeed. On Tuesday night I didn't sleep a wink all night. It was a very strange experience. I was extremely tired but not at all sleepy. It felt like my body had forgotten how to go to sleep. Everytime I closed my eyes, instead of drifting away into sleep, I was just left staring at the inside of my eyelids, completely awake. I did everything I could tink of to try to sleep. After the first hour I took one of the over-the-counter sleeping tablets that I've used with success before. No effect. Then I tried adding Melatonin to the cocktail. No effect. Then I tried listening to music. No effect. Paradoxically, I didn't bother trying to read because I knew I was too tired to concentrate. Wierd.

The result was that on Wednesday I was completely broken. I had an appointment at 7:45am, but I couldn't get out of bed in time. Everytime I stood up the world started spinning to the extent that I felt nauseous. I had stuff to do so eventually I scraped myself together and managed to get to the office at midday. Once there I discovered that I wasn't really much use. I had to read a paper for someone and the words just blurred before my eyes. I had to read sentences three times before they meant anything to me. Jeez. Still, I got done what needed to be done and then retreated back to the hospital.

Wednesday night I slept at the McD house. This was marginally better, I managed to get 6 hours or so of 'normal' sleep. But on Thursday night I again couldn't sleep. Thursday was our wedding anniversary. Marion suggested that we eat together and spend the night at the McD house. Given the disasterous evening that we had the last time that we tried the same thing, I was pretty cautious about the idea. I negotiated it with Kay, who appreciated that it was our anniversary. And I instructed the nurse to not let Kay phone us via Skype. If she need us then the nurse should phone. We also agreed with Kay that we would come and tuck her in when we came back from eating.

In the end we had a good evening. The only problem was that we made the mistake of telling the owner of the restaurant that it was our anniversary, with the result that we, or rather I, left the restaurant rather the worse for wear. Thus, when it came to trying to sleep, my lack of sleepiness was compounded by a growing headache. And so I spent the night trying to find some way, some angle, some pattern of thinking or even not thinking, that would allow me to get to sleep. No luck, I saw every hour of the night.

Since I had to drive from Nijmegen to the office and my new laptop was waiting for attention and bearing in mind that I had to prepare a financial planning update, I eventually gave up and got out of bed early. I arrived at the office with enough time to sort out the basics of the laptop and install MS Office before everyone else started to arrive. But frankly I felt dreadful the whole day, dizzy, nauseous and disoriented. It was extremely difficult to concentrate on anything. Eventually, I gave up and went home. I dozed on the bed for an hour or so and then lamely blundered around the house for a while, then ended up continuing installing my laptop. Eventually Nattie & I went to bed at 9.30pm or so.

I'm sat here now feeling like there's an electric current of tiredness running through my head. I'm going to do some cycling to see if that can either improve my head or make me tired enough to sleep. But I've decided to cycle inside on the simulator as I have no idea how far I'm going to feel like going and I don't want to run out of juice 50km away from home. I've also arrange to get a (fantastic) massage this afternoon to see if that can help.

For me personally, this is the worse stage of the whole story so far. The only major light on the horizon is that it looks like the business has some interesting opportunities developing. But that aside, I have never felt worse in my life and I have no idea how this tiredness will resolve itself. I have no choice but to continue what I'm doing, both home, work and Kay. But it's never been harder than now.