Thursday, March 5, 2009

Five night shifts, no sleep and a few less brain cells

So I have this friend at work, Terri. She is the official night shift girl at Eden. She is away on vacation for a week so I received her night shifts for my schedule. Night shifts in and of themselves are not really a bad thing but after 5 of them and no sleep you are not the most sensible person in the world. I might add you loose your senses when you are sleep deprived and can’t remember anything important and sometimes your name alludes you!
You see most go home after working all night and sleep. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? Well in my house; NOT SO REASONABLE, my children don’t get the fact that Mommy needs to sleep when they are wide awake. So by the time yesterday morning came I was a walking zombie. I could of starred in a horror movie and won best actress for it without any studying!!! Michelle-The Walking Dead Woman!
Mentioning studying reminds me that night shift isn’t conducive to school work. I have time at night to work on school work but my brain does not allow night study, it’s against the rules! So no school work at night and when day comes and I’m home sitting in front of the computer trying to read and do assignments I’m falling asleep. No retention at all. No ability to formulate a thought! So needless to say I was late with some of my school work this week and probably it didn’t make a heck of a lot of sense. I wish I could boo hoo to my instructors and explain my tardiness and lack of knowledge away. However, at this stage of the game I’m thinking they would say,
“SUCK IT UP PRINCESS, you’ve made your choices now deal!”
I had good night shifts though. My last one I did with Janice…oh the fun! Janice is a great girl to do a shift with she’s funny. LOVE HER! I told her I was going to write about her and tell all her deep dark night shift secrets but there really isn’t any so I only have something nice to tell. My belly was sick and she suggested crackers and water and I felt much better so thank you for your wisdom, Janice. (you can pay me later) Did you know that most people who work nights get sick stomachs because their body is off? Hmm, I didn’t know that. I came in early my last night and one of the girls said; “have you got heart burn yet?” I, who never get heart burn says; “YES!” in wide eyed shock that she knew my symptoms! Apparently it’s common when you do lots of nights.
So last night was my first night in my own bed after 5 nights away. It didn’t work out too well. I couldn’t sleep in my bed, I wasn’t used to it anymore. So I went upstairs and laid on the sofa. Success! Fell asleep till about 2am and woke. You see I should have been dispensing meds and making supper at that time so my body told me get up. I was awake till about 3am and went back to sleep till 6am. Now we have an early staff in at 6:30am to help get the kids ready for the day. So again my body was telling me time to stop watching TV (which I wasn’t doing at home but do at work about that time) and get up and starting getting set for the kiddies getting up. So tonight I’m tired still. I went to bed at 9pm but couldn’t really sleep so here I sit at 11pm writing a note to you all. When I’m done I’ll be going down to lay in my bed and hopefully sleep. Wish me luck!
I really don’t have anything else to say about night shift other then if you are going to be on night shift get prepared, get some sleep and send your kiddies away while you try to sleep. Good night, sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite!!!!

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