Friday, October 9, 2009

The Freeze Dried Brain

I worked 36 hours in three days. I have absolutely nothing clever to say. Twelve hours at a time of continual human interaction and information processing. Usually about a third to halfway through the day my brain just sort of goes, "crunch." Suddenly my memory span is very short. I stop being able to process information.

To be fair, a lot of this is sleep deprivation. My car was finally ready after being vandalized, and the best time to pick it up seemed to be yesterday at 8 AM after going to sleep after midnight, so I woke at 0645.

A pharmacy calls to say that such and such medications are not covered by Medicaid. I am unable to hear the caller well enough to understand when she recites the medication so quickly, so she spells it, equally quickly. My ears are hearing but I just can't follow it that fast. I have her talk to the medication nurse. This decreased ability is terrifying.

My head feels as if the strands of my thoughts become tangled. I used to think I was eating and reading at the same time merely because it is soothing. But there is something about that activity that puts my mind in a trance-like state and enables the tangles to comb out again. Even though I have provided myself with ample plant-based, whole delicious foods, I find myself craving candies and natural Cheetos puffs and so forth. Not out of hunger, but out of trying to operate with a freeze-dried brain. And stress.

My plan is to find a way to detangle and unstress my brain in a healthy and efficient manner.

One triumph: I found a setting with the tape recorder at work which is sensitive enough to pick up my voice, so recording report went much smoother last night. Yay.

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