It's The Little Goddamn Things (and a Sleep History)

The more that gets taken away, the more you dig what is left.

I have to sleep on my back. Period. I can't call it sleep because I can't sleep on my back. It's more like slipping in and out of a coma. I take a pain killer before I go to bed and within half an hour I pass out. Out of exhaustion, because I haven't slept well in a solid month, and out of TPC - temporary pain cessation.

For some strange reason I seem to wake up right around 3:00 every morning. I visit the porcelain God, crawl back into bed and then the games begin. The lying there, mind racing, can't get back to sleep games.

My sleep history is as follows. I slept on my stomach my entire life, contentedly, until 1990 when I hurt my back in a strange and twisted weight lifting incident. (Hyperbole).

After that incident I could no longer sleep on my stomach; it killed my back. So I had to learn to sleep on my side and have not had a solid night's sleep since.

I have never been able to sleep on my back.

Now, with the pinched neck bullshit, I cannot sleep on my side. Serious pain.

So when I'm awake I lie there like a corpse, hands folded over my chest, bemoaning my fate.

Every once in a while out of sheer desperation I roll over onto my right side just to get some relief. The left side is far out of the question. When I roll to the left everything goes crazy. Neck, shoulder, tricep, forearm, back. Yowza, baby - I am a masochist but this stuff is not in my pleasure zone.

Anyway, I am lying on my back, the hip starts to hurt, the knee starts to hurt, the back starts to hurt, I get pissed off and roll to the right.

I get five minutes of relief. My body actually says thank you, I am comfortable here. I sink into the mattress.

Until the pain begins. Then I furiously roll back onto my back.

This morning Carol crawled out of bed and I was on my back, uncomfortably. Pissed off I rolled to the right. The pain never came. What?

I fell asleep. I fell agoddamnsleep. I woke up at 8:30, stunned, amazed and amused.

After Lakota nudged me to complete awakeness I got down on my knees and thanked Jesus for the temporary reprieve of pain.

I don't know where it came from or if it means anything at all, but Jesus Christ, that little break, that exquisite ability to sleep for a while on my right side was quite as good as if someone handed me a million dollars.

It's the little things, baby.