He flopped back over onto his left side and let out a loud frustrated groan. He thought he had gotten past getting pissed off when trying and failing to sleep. After not being able to sleep for most of his life, he had finally let it go and accepted it. He had learned to get out of bed, instead of fighting sleep, and try to be productive, or just zone out to the overnight news broadcasts to try to relax. It was the spiraling thought. It was his biggest sleep enemy. Some sort of dreadful anxious notion that would repeat in his mind endlessly, keeping him from sleep and making him agitated. Generally, when he was younger, these were about trying to solve some problem at school – not wanting to fall behind, or having to deal with a classmate for some reason. Then it became work shit and sleep became that much more difficult – especially having a job that was never resolved – just a constant continuing cycle of chaos where no sense of accomplishment could ever be felt. Yet, he had begun to feel better, once he realized that if he just accepted sleeplessness as a part of his life.
The futility of it all is what made him so upset. It all reminded him of his past experience with the Pain Management Clinic and the resulting overnight sleep study. The bizarre study that took place on a Friday night one summer, where he was expected to go to sleep at about 7 in the evening. They hooked about 500 wires to him and left him in a lightless room, with nothing to do. According to the unbelievably handsome doctor who he consulted with the following morning, he did actually sleep some, but stayed in the first phase of sleep the entire time. This is a phase, where the sleeper’s mind is still semi-conscious and they have incredibly vivid visions or dreams. This phase normally lasts for less than ten minutes, but he laughed as he told Charles that he stayed there much of the night and never delved into the next phase. He said, that it’s actually more tiring than not sleeping, again with a chuckle, as he looked to be practicing his golf grip on the pointer in his tan hands. That was it! Charles didn’t ask any questions either! It was like six am on a sunny summer Saturday morning, he probably had a tee time too. The good looking sleep doctor wrote him a prescription for Ambien, which Chuck had tried in the past and for which it had long lost any effectiveness.
Charles laughed to himself as he
thought about the old Pain Management Clinic.
It had all started when his normal headaches were becoming so intense
that he was struggling to function. It
was a few months after his kidney transplant, and his transplant doctor thought
the PMC might be able to help him. The
clinic was designed to address chronic pain from different angles. A patient was set up with a medical doctor to
direct each case, a physical therapist, and a psychiatrist. I met my team and they immediately referred
me to a headache specialist who looked way too much like the early Law & Order detective Lennie Briscoe. It’s amazing how little we as people know
about the brain. Treating sleep and
headaches at that time was to prescribe a series of formerly antidepressant
medications, of which none of them helped my headache nor my sleep, so, after a
while Dr. Jerry Orbach sent me back
to the PMC. The four people I interacted
with there was the receptionist, who was clearly in charge of the entire clinic
and who was a voluptuous blonde named Jenna
Jameson, who seemed oblivious that she shared the same name as the most well-known
porn star at the time. Charles would
save the phone messages from her regarding upcoming appointments – hoping his
roommates would listen to them. His
doctor was Dr. Miracle, who was
eerily similar to the Orbit Gum
spokeswoman with her sharp British accent and early 60s fashion sense, the
psychiatrist was a creepy guy who reeked of cigarettes, had a tiny cramped
office, greasy hair, and tons of cassette tapes which he had recorded of him
saying things quietly over the sounds of a babbling brook or some such. Chuck’s first and last session with him took
place in a tiny windowless office crowded with stacks of file boxes, after it
seemed the shrink had inhaled a tuna sandwich.
They were in facing desk chairs only a few feet apart. Charles was incredibly uncomfortable, while
the psychiatrist diagnosed him as needing sleep, so gave him a few of his
homemade relaxation tapes. Lastly,
Charles would see a physical therapist each visit, who would generally employ Craniosacral Therapy on him, which
would make him incredibly woozy for the rest of the day, and unsurprisingly,
she was the one who diagnosed and solved his headache issues.
He was now dreaming. He could tell, because he was about four or five years old and there was his mom walking behind him. She was wearing dark sunglasses. Beside him was his childhood friend, Jon, whose family lived across the street in their old neighborhood. They seemed to be at a carnival of some sort. Dried and pressed grass beneath their feet, twirling rides all about, the smell of burned grease and oil. He was wearing sandals with white socks and blue shorts. He had a t-shirt on underneath the green cardigan sweater his grandmother had knitted him. He was also wearing a blue bucket hat, which he had loved. He spotted another kid nearby with an ice cream cone shoved up underneath his nose. He immediately thought about asking his mom for one, but decided against it, when he realized that he was carrying something. He had a scrapbook in his hands. Within the context of the dream, he knew that it was his. His soon to be Kindergarten teacher and his mom had started this book for him. Inside were projects for him to work on. It contained reading assignments, art to draw and color, things to read and places to write about various things.
His mom had not been around the family for a short while, and had taken this book with her, but now she was back and the book had some new pages. The carnival seemed to be near the Hollywood District in Portland. They had likely walked down the hill from their neighborhood to get there. It seemed to be themed around movie and TV characters who were based in Portland. There was a ride/exhibit that featured odd random characters from the old primetime cartoon the Flintstones, who were apparently Portland born. Strange, but very Portland. Our inferiority complex runs deep. Our local news will report about an earthquake in Istanbul or somewhere and relate it to our quake readiness for “when the big one comes.” They always find some reason to find a NW connection – no matter how loose – to any news positive or not
This was different from any dream he had ever had with his mom. The only dreams she ever showed up in were the occasional dreams where she would re-appear in his life, such as it is now. She hadn’t died. Instead she had gone into hiding for all of these years. In other words, she had chosen to leave. These were disturbing, hurtful and very realistic dreams that he hated. Over the years, he had worked to try to control his dreams, but in this light state of sleep, his influence generally just woke him. In the case of disturbing dreams like these, he was okay with that.
His mom used to discuss various controversial subjects with him. The first one he remembered was when Oregon passed a mandatory seatbelt law, but he remembered long discussions regarding hunting, clear cutting forests versus preserving them, the death penalty, abortion, and even daylight savings time. She would let him come to his own conclusions, would never raise her voice or try to sway his decision, but would play devil’s advocate to test his newly found stances no matter the side he had chosen. He learned a lot and always appreciated her approach. It made him feel important.
He sat next to her on a park
bench. Jon, and his older sister
Michelle, were waiting in line to ride a Merry-Go-Round made up of Portland
based cartoon dinosaurs. He was looking
at his scrapbook. His mom had added some
pages about accepting death. He turned
to her and asked her what these were for, and she said that it was time to get
back home. All of us kids were due at
our elderly neighbor’s house, the Kimberly’s.
The childless elderly couple often took care of the young kids in the
neighborhood and they spoiled all of us.
We were always welcome to come in for cookies or candy, or play basketball
in their driveway, or watch their television.
They were super nice. He tried to
ask his mom again regarding the death pages in the scrapbook. His semi-conscious self wondered if these
were a warning years too late? This was
before his grandmother had passed and all of the dying began. Were they preparing him for an upcoming loss
of someone close in his life now? Were
they for his own life? His attempt to control the dream stirred him
to wake up and feel more exhausted than before he laid down.
