I will write about some of the adventures we had in Hawaii but not yet. The whole trip was so fun and adventurous with not a lot of down or sleep time (just a few hours a night), and actually that may have been a blessing - I'm hoping I can carry on this endurance into the school year to push through what I'm anticipating to be long days of studying and clinic and SOAP notes.
Anyway, point of this slightly disconnected post was that I've never traveled like this before, or gone without sleep like this before. Sure, it once took me over 15 hours to get back to Austin from Scranton on a hellish delay in Newark, but I've never dealt with a time change like this or a long flight like this. Going out we got stuck in Denver overnight, which broke up the traveling, but coming home went like this:
Wednesday
8 am (HI)/1 pm (TX) - woke up. breakfast and packing, and then beach.
5 pm (HI)/10 pm (TX) - left Kaua'i for Honolulu.
10 pm (HI)/3 am (TX) - left Honolulu for Colorado - very turbulent flight, and despite being a big plane an a redeye, I didn't sleep at all.
Thursday
4 am (HI)/9 am (TX) - landed in Colorado.
6 am (HI)/11 am (TX) - left Colorado for Austin (almost got stuck there until 8 pm since flight was overbooked!). tiny plane, and again couldn't sleep on flight.
8:30 am (HI)/1:30 pm (TX) - landed in Austin. went out for lunch with sis and helped her with apt hunting.
12 noon (HI)/5 pm (TX) - finally made it back to my apt and unloaded my bags. was afraid to take a nap since I didn't want to ruin my night-sleep and had to wake up really early the next morning for a long day of orientation
6:30 pm (HI)/11:30 pm (TX) - went to bed. first sleep I got since 8 am/1 pm Wednesday morning in Hawaii.
Friday
1:15 a.m (HI)/6:15 am (TX) - woke up and went to clinic orientation all day. was very perky and awake for morning training and am now officially certified by state of Texas to conduct hearing screenings. :-)
10 am (HI)/3 pm (TX) - helped sister find souvenirs at CO-OP and food-shopped
1 pm (HI)/6 pm (TX) - crash-napped for an hour
2 pm (HI)/7 pm (TX) - went for dinner with sis, and then over to gathering at friend's house for a movie.
6 pm (HI)/11 pm (TX) - came back and helped sis pack.
9 pm (HI)/2 am (TX) - this brings us to now. I'm about to go to bed again. I know I need to sleep, since I've only gotten about 7 hours and 45 min of sleep in the last 61 hours.
I know it sounds weird, but I'm not really tired. I feel like I have this weird manic energy. I feel almost super-human, like I could go on forever. I know this is a false premise and that if I keep going this way I will inevitably get sick (knock of wood) or just crash. Or, perhaps worse and even more likely, I will reawaken that beast I battled with on and off over the past two years: insomnia.
I have to drop my sister off at the airport in 4 hours, and then take my car to the shop, but after that I plan on making tomorrow my day. I will take a hot shower, I will drink a hot tea, and I lotion myself up, I will take a sleep aid if necessary, and I will force myself to crawl under the sheets and sleep as much as I possibly can.
School and clinic start next week. As much as I love riding this sleepless high and sense of needlessness, I know it will kick my ass in the end if don't rest up before the semester kicks in.
Ok. Time to try and catch some zzzz's before tomorrow's early day.
Love love. <3 <3
