I Am Alice

This is long, but it's fun. Remember the days when you could lie down anywhere and drop into deep slumber in a flash? Maybe you're still there, but it is a dim memory for me. Going to bed lately has become a major project, every night. The older I get, the more vital sleep seems, but the more evasive it becomes, and the more creative I have to get to catch and retain it. As if the old routine of turning off the house lights and securing the doors, getting undressed, brushing the teeth, washing the face, and saying the prayers weren't enough, my aging, scarred body has gradually demanded more and more preparatory measures. Machines and devices have aided the capture and maintenance efforts, but have prolonged the nightly preparation.

For some time now, I have been using therapeutic stockings for varicose veins. Taking them off nightly is a chore. Also, you know those old guys with ear and nose hairs that look like they might take over? Well, about age 55, they start showing up. So, I have added plucking to my nightly routine. Also, speaking of ears, I seem to have inherited Arvilla's tendency to loose hearing with age. I procured some hearing aids some time back, and although I've had a hard time making them a habit, when I do use them, they reauire cleaning and charging at bedtime.

Then there's the bladder which has become ever more sensitive, a fact exacerbated by my burgeoning prostate gland which guards the door and enforces a stingy emigration quota, preventing complete evacuation. So it's not long before bladderville is overpopulated again. So I've learned that going potty just one last time will allow me to sleep maybe 3 instead of 2 1/2 hours before the attenuation wakes me again.

Then, as most of you know, I have been using a C-PAP machine for some time to maintain sleep. It allows only nasal breathing, necessitating a whole nother list of minutia to assure open nasal passages all night: cleaning and filling the humidity chamber, netty pot saline flushing of the nasal passages (Mom got me started on that one and she's got her own routine you'll have to ask her about,) using various sprays to prevent congestion, applying Breath-Rite nasal strips to optimize air flow, and fighting with the C-PAP tubing in the dark so it stays untangled all night.

I have also discovered that if I modify the mattress just so, my back won't hurt in the morning. so, before hopping into the sack, I have a series of 6 different pillows that I arrange in just the right fashion to keep me stable all night. I know you all think i'm crazy, but you just wait. You'll get yours some day. Anyway, all I care i that it works. Then, after getting into bed and donning the C-PAP, applying various eye drops helps minimize drying eyes through the night.

Finally, I get laid down, usually to realize at least once, that I forgot something, so I have to get up and take care of it before I at last get to sleep. That's the routine I have been pursuing for the past several years, and it's worked well generally. Of course, these many steps have been added gradually, and they've worked so well that I hadn't really considered their abundance, until lately when substantially more minutia has by necessity, been added to the routine all at once.

Subsequent to the hand injury, I now have a long list of therapy exercises to do each night. Then there's the night splint to be applied, followed by the foam protector to keep the hand elevated. I've also just added a bone-growth stimulator which velcros around the fingers and produces a magnetic field to help the bone heal faster. It has to be worn for 10 of every 24 hours, so it's usually worn through the night.

That's not all. Some of you may have noticed a new whitish cast in my left eye. It's the remnants of a cataract that developed from a childhood injury and then showed up again after I was hit in the eye by a chord while remodeling Grandma's house last winter. It's no big deal because the vision in the eye was already bad, but the appearance has become a distraction for people I talk to, e.g. my patients. So, I went to an ophthalmologist to see if it could be removed, but he suggested the simpler option of a cosmetic contact lens. They take a photo of your normal eye and use it to fashion a look-alike full-eye lens that you then put over the repulsive one. Sounds good to me, so I'm ordering it this week, and when I get it, then I will have to add "taking out my glass eye" to my nightly routine.

It was this last item that finally exposed my pitiful lot as it perked a childhood memory of scout camp where we would sing songs around the campfire at night. The particular song I remembered deals with a pathetic soul named Alice. The lyrics listed below (as I remember them) go with the tune on the you-tube video of a bunch of Scotsmen singing their own version of the same song about some wretched wench named Sadie.

As you watch/read, imagine a bunch of boy scouts singing this around the campfire, right after they sang another song about boogers or farts, or whatever. This is about as good as the entertainment gets lately, so enjoy! And, by the way, never get old!!

Dad

After the ball was over,

Alice took out her glass eye,

Put her false teeth in some water,

Hung up her wig to dry,

Put her peg leg in the corner,

Hung her tin ear on the wall.

There wasn't much left of poor A-aaa-lice

After the ball!