This article is part of a series of contributions.
Exciting topic. Because without a good night's sleep, I'm good for nothing. That's like the iron rule of not talking to me before my second coffee in the morning.
In the past, I had no problem going to bed at 2am and getting up at 5am for a quick 10km run... before sitting at my desk in the office at 8am. But that requires a lot of discipline and good sleep. Two things I've been better at before. That, and a few other possible causes for our current difficulties in changing masks, come to mind when I try to blame myself first, as usual.
For my part, I can identify the following possible reasons:
- I am totally lacking the patience for which I am usually praised so extraordinarily, because things are not going well on many levels with my care service. Today is the best example again. What was that again? What did the management and the nursing staff promise me several times? New employees will get a proper induction in future. That's what they told me. It makes sense with 24-hour care. But like every time, we work here according to the principle of "learning by doing".
Drop by one afternoon to see if it would fit. If so, at least one day of training is to be arranged and a night shift to be done in pairs. And then the people are let loose on me again without training. Don't get me wrong, it works, it's just not what we agreed on for a good reason. Keyword: panic attack.
Edit: The first day with my new nurse was great. Everything worked perfectly with the masks. I slept carefree for the first time in almost a week. Without benzos and for three hours straight. My dear nurse even called colleagues to ask if she shouldn't put me to bed. I think the response was along the lines of "make sure you let him sleep when he finally does".
What should I say? Actually, I can delete all the next sentences and write "Get nurses who can handle your mask and don't blame the patient if they don't get it right".
- I haven't slept properly for days. One of the nurses complains that I'm too early every time I'm in bed (is that still going on?) and cuts me off as soon as I want to say something. In other words, they pull the mask so tight that I can neither trigger nor set off the alarm. But the alarm is useless anyway if the nurse doesn't come.
The next ones don't manage to assemble my mask. Which, of course, is always discovered after the previous mask has already been removed.
Or they don't even manage to put the mask on straight and not crooked or upside down.
Or turning at night without letting my head drop so far that the mask falls off completely. I don't want to write any more at this point, because actually every point would justify a crisis talk in itself and I honestly don't know how to deal with some things yet.
- My hair is too long. Next week my hairdresser will come and cut it. Not because I really want to. But to take the wind out of the sails of the excuse that my hair is to blame.
And yet there are some carers who have no stress at all. Unfortunately, they are all on holiday at the moment, are not on duty with me at the moment or are not my carers at all but friends.
And I really get the shits when my friends let me show them how to do it once and from then on they always take me there, but someone from the intensive care service drops my head five times in a row until I give up unnerved. Just the other day I slept only three hours, just because of that.
If only that were "everything".
