Sleepless Days

After a week of night shifts, I've been having sleepless days. Don't get me wrong, when I stumble into bed at 8 in the morning I'm out like a light. It's waking up at 11 in the morning to beautiful sunlight streaming on my face and birds chirping out my window and everything in me saying I'm wasting the day! Get up! is when I find it hard to go back to sleep. I rejoiced on the few days when it was dark and rainy, everybody stays indoors when it's dark and rainy, so I didn't feel guilty for being in bed. Even when I've been up all night. And then there's the dreams. I always dream even when I'm sleeping regular hours, but there's something about sleeping during the day that makes the dreams more vivid. Or perhaps because I'm never very deeply asleep I can remember them with greater accuracy. And they're mostly about work, conversations with doctors, listening to lungs, giving medications, drawing blood. They're the kind of dreams you wonder if you really had... or maybe they happened sometime during that hazy night that was your work "day". The point of all this is... night shifts are not for me. I don't care how many people have told me I'll get used to it, used to living on diet coke and coffee, taking Benadryl to help you sleep at day, covering your windows with thick heavy material, eating lunch at three in the morning, becoming pale and sickly with lack of sunlight, asking your friends why they're going to bed already, it's only two in the morning. No, I don't think I'll get used to it. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to try.