Here’s something you may not know: you will never get more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep in the hospital. True, you will get plenty of rest, but it will come in bursts. Night time is a busy time. Nurses and technicians are always coming in to check your vitals (blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature), draw your blood, and give you medicine.
That said, night time in the hospital is something to be experienced. Seriously. Everything is so quiet yet so active. In those fleeting windows of time where no one is checking in on you, you are left to lie quietly in the dark with just your thoughts. Sometimes you hear commotion in other rooms. Sometimes you get air bubbles in your IV tube and the IV alarm goes off. Sometimes it’s just quiet. Either way, without the distractions of daily life, you’ll feel an uncanny awareness of yourself. It’s almost impossible to describe. It’s sort of like a peaceful insomnia. I’m sure there’s a perfect word for it in German. You process everything that’s happened and everything that could happen, but somehow, it’s alright. As I mentioned in my last post, everything unimportant fades away and somehow you just feel calm and ok.