Hospital Overnights -- Revisited

In a blog posting back in May, I mentioned that I found it impossible to sleep during the two nights I was in the hospital because of all the noise and other interruptions. People talking loudly in the halls, automated equipment in my room making buzz/click/whirr noises, folks parading in and out taking blood pressure measurements on me and my roommate, and so forth.

Well, I had to spend another night in the hospital last Thursday, to recover from having a food tube installed in my stomach/abdominal wall. (I'll blog more about this later, but the basic idea is that my mouth and throat may, in the next couple of weeks, become so sore that swallowing will become a major challenge. Which means that I wouldn't eat enough. Which means that I would lose body mass and strength at a most unfortunate time... So install the tube now, when my body can handle the intrusion(s) involved as a precaution. So far so good, but there's a long way to go.)

Anyway, I decided on Thursday -- as soon as I got to my hospital room -- that sleep that night would not be an objective. That, by setting sleep as a goal, I was setting myself up for frustration and failure. And more fatigue.

The option was to sink as deeply as I could into rest -- whether awake or unconscious -- in an effort to address the fatigue factor I mentioned recently in a posting. When I did that, the voices in the hallway stopped being an irritant and became, instead, the sound of people living normal lives. The whirrs and buzzes and clicks stopped being impediments to sleep and became reminders of all the technological wonders from which I was benefiting. And, of course, I drifted off to sleep from time to time.

I'm experiencing some considerable discomfort from the newly installed feeding tube, but have been assured that these symptoms dissipate as my body adjusts to the new appliance in my tummy.

But the fatigue I wrote about is gone.