goodnight sweetheart, goodnight

Dear Marianne,

I calculate that I have had approximately 14 minutes sleep over the last two weeks. Mike's cough is keeping us up all night, it is a real dry hacking cough, horrible. Sleep deprivation apparently is bad for you and is a form of torture, but I'm fine, no noticeable effects from lack of sleep. Michael and Anna's toys are looking after me today, we are having a tea party, it's fun, look at all the pretty colours Marianne...no, really I'm fine.

Anna and Becky have the cough now - so looks like I will be seeing a lot of the night again tonight and tomorrow night and perhaps for another few weeks. I'm trying not to show my panic to anyone else as I stumble up to school with my hair leaning to the left, my eyes black and my clothes leaning to the right, but I am utterly consumed by the fear of this forthcoming lack of sleep. I spoke to London Bird Ali, and we discussed how it used to feel when we had just had a baby. We were quietly agreeing that sleep deprivation came with the territory of newborns, and then she said suddenly and violently, "Yes, you are so tired you wish you were dead, but it's worse than being dead, because you are alive!" Worringly, I completely understood.

Last night in the middle of all this lack of sleep, insomnia got me, how can that be, isn't that a living form of a double negative? I tried to deal with it by staying up very late, watching Australia versus New Zealand, I mean watching Australia crucify New Zealand, in the One Day gigs. This I mixed with a little light relief, provided by American Idol auditions on one of the weird channels. Then I tuned to 24 Hour News - which I have heard is often the cause of sleep.

It is tinnitus which keeps me awake, I have it all the time, and my chosen ear noise is usually high pitched, but sometimes it turns to a low rumble, like a lorry parked outside my bedroom door. When it first arrived about ten years ago, I was so freaked out that I would drive fast in the car in the middle of the night - good for cutting out tinnitus, bad for sleeping; dangerous for sleeping. In the end it was Craig, who read to me every night(I know each Ray Bradbury short story very, very well)who instilled a sense of calm into me and my noise and in the end it worked like a drug - I would often be asleep before the end of the first page.

Last night Craig was asleep before I could put in my bid for a story, and after bad tv had failed me, I eventually tried bed as an option. At 2am I fell in to bed and then at 2:30 out again, to do medicine and milk (for the kids, not me). Howling winds and the lorry parked outside my bedroom door, competed and conspired to keep me wide awake until this morning. And, since fourteen minutes is just not enough sleep for a grown up to operate on, tonight at 7pm, I plan to put on my pyjamas with Anna and Mike and settle down with a blanket, a bottle of milk and a gallon of Medised and have Craig read us all a Bradbury story - should have thought of it earlier, but I was too darned tired.

Rx