Too Real

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Lizard sometimes has horrific nightmares. Thankfully, he more recently is unable to remember most of his bad dreams when I wake him to calm him from blood-curdling screams. I consider his inability to remember his night terrors as one of the most gigantic tender mercies we receive these days.

We both had gone sleepless several nights the week I scheduled to drop off snowflakes in person to a pair of Operation Ornaments coordinators. Carol and Carolyn (the founder) were conducting workshops for disaster preparedness and to assemble ornament packages for families affected by the 2023 fires in Lahaina, Hawaii. Lizard accompanied me to deliver ornaments handmade by me, Sisters of the Snowflake founder Autumn, and a pair of sister missionaries from my church. We had a delightful visit with the two women, whom we were so excited to meet, and I even got interviewed as an "Ornament Angel."

Both Lizard and I fell fast sleep upon returning home... in the middle of the day. We have been working diligently since March to flip our sleep schedule. We had gone 35 consecutive days of sleeping only at night until near the end of June, when suddenly and without explanation we were struggling again. I hear it's very common for people with Parkinson's (and as a result, their caregivers) to sleep all day and be up all night. Just like the old song from high school, only not from partying...

Our palliative care nurse had recommended we nap not longer than 30 minutes during the day (up to three times per day) to make sleep at night more needful. That's how we'd finally built more than a month of back-to-back success. I let him sleep an hour if he's had a difficult night, and he'd definitely had a difficult night. I told Lizard we could sleep only until the alarm signaling his next medication dose, which would be just a bit more than an hour.

Now it was my turn for nightmares. I dreamed, so vividly I thought it was real, that I had forgotten a box of snowflakes and instructed Lizard to sleep on while I delivered the final box. I planned to be back well before his next dose of medication.

In the dream, I quickly delivered the snowflakes, then returned to the parking lot, only to discover my car was gone! Sheer panic set in as I tried to figure out how to get Lizard his pills without transportation to get me there on time. I wandered the neighborhood in a high state of anxiety, pushing the alarm button on my key FOB, earnestly listening for the beep of my car's alarm. Crickets.

I wandered beneath an overpass where the eyes of gangs of unkempt men much larger than me riveted upon me. I was even more terrified. I tried to briskly make my way back into the daylight when suddenly I heard my car beep. I had continued pushing the button on the FOB as I walked. My eyes followed the sound of the beeps from my car, but instead of my car, my vision landed upon a vehicle filled with even more men, and they were driving straight toward me. I began to run toward the daylight as fast as I could.

My phone rang, and I was shocked to see Lizard was calling. I speedily answered and tried to keep my calm while explaining to him why I wasn't home yet while marveling at his renewed ability to use the phone. In real life, he has not been able to operate his phone for more than a year, but just the day before, he had succeeded in calling me while I was in the garden. He didn't know where I'd gone and was trying to find me. I asked him how he figured out how to call me, and he couldn't remember. But, back to the nightmare, Lizard expressed his anxiety over not being able to find his pills.

I tried to explain how to open the Saturday compartment of the pill box and how to retrieve just three pills when his alarm, on his phone, on which he was trying to speak, began blaring again. In real life, he often accidentally hits the snooze button instead of the stop button. He began panicking, and I told him I would call for an Uber ride so I could get home and help him with his pills. I was still running for daylight, and a monster car was still gaining on me.

Just then, his real alarm in real life began blaring, jarring us both. The dream seemed so real to me, I thought our car was still missing. My heart was up in my throat, and my blood pressure likely was off the charts. I ran to the front window and stared in shock at the car properly parked right where I'd left it. All was safe and sound. Lizard got his pills, and his reaction to my trepidation was enough to thoroughly wake both of us. For HOURS!

Not the most user-friendly method of enforcing shorter naps, but I can't deny its effectiveness. On the very bright side, we didn't fall back asleep until after 10 that night. Even more importantly, we slept through the night!!!

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