fifi’s grafitti

Now that I’ve reached the age where body parts start falling off, my doctors get to play Frankenstein with me. They prescribe chemicals to make this or that body function work “better, faster, stronger”. They soup up my thyroid. They unclog my arteries. They want to mold me into the bionic woman. What they get is superchocoholic.

It turns out the particular combination of drugs I take gives me insomnia. My body wants to sleep but my brain is racing on to the next day, the next week, the next month. It’s a hamster on speed on an endless treadmill. I’ve tried relaxation tapes, chamomile tea, reading the assembly manual to the air conditioner; nothing works. I toss and turn and exhaust myself even more, but it takes hours for sleep to come. My doctor prescribed one of those new “nonaddictive” sleep aids you see on tv. My insurance didn’t want to pay for the lovely-sounding “lunesta”, which is accompanied on tv by a pale luna moth; or the comfortable-sounding “ambien”, which literally reeks of ambience. No, instead I got the decidedly unlovely-sounding “zolpidem.” I finally get my sleep; I’ll give it that. Fifteen or twenty minutes after ingesting it I’m out like a light for about 8 hours. The first few times I tried it I felt a bit as if I had a hangover the next morning; but that feeling has since subsided and I’m well-rested.

The odd thing about this drug-induced sleep state is the dreams. Or lack thereof. If I do dream, I don’t remember, except for one incident. One day this week I had a vague memory about going into the pantry and ripping the top off a bag of chocolate chips, which I then put back because they were milk chocolate, not semi-sweet. Later that day, or the next my mom asked me why I was eating chocolate chips in the middle of the night. I don’t remember actually eating them; all I have is that shadow of a dream that I did it. Well, now my mom has hidden the chocolate chips. I wonder if I will go on a moonlight rampage searching for them.