Still no sleep

Andy was shaken by all of this. He was trying to comfort me and encourage me to eat and make our apartment amenable to sleeping. But he knew he could not handle this alone. He sent me to my doctor who gave me a sleeping pill. Also on Thursday, we called my parents who were on a cruise in the southern Caribbean. They were not due to fly back for several days, but they quickly discerned the gravity of the situation and arranged to get back on Saturday.

I kept trying to eat, to no avail. I couldn’t even swallow. But boy could I talk! My speech was stream of consciousness. To me it made perfect sense: the leaping from one unfinished thought to another, full of purpose but absent direction. I felt I could not talk fast enough to keep up with the rapid firing pistons in my brain.

When I went to the drugstore to get my sleeping pill, I had the most unusual feeling (although I soon learned that a panoply of new feelings were in store). I felt like others were looking at me with recognition. As if they knew me, but more than that. As if they knew I was special, touched, destined to do great things. Could they know I was the Second Coming? Had they been waiting for me all along? They seemed to look on me with joyous expectation. They looked at me unflinchingly and kindly. Looking back on it now, I think it more likely was concern that I saw in their eyes, and a sweet sympathy for someone who looked as sick as I did. But I wonder….

On Thursday night I tried to relax before bedtime by watching “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” This was a strange experience. I swear Regis Philbin looked right at me several times and asked me if I knew the answers. I also felt like I could transmit correct answers to the contestants, telepathically. I knew all the answers.

By Friday morning I was terrified. Four days and nights without sleeping or eating. We tried to call my parents again, but it was virtually impossible to reach them and the call cost a fortune per minute. My mother has a recurring dream that she is trying to call one of her children and cannot get through either because she cannot remember the number, cannot see to dial the number, or the line goes dead. That’s what it felt like on both ends.

I do remember asking my mother over the phone if she trusted me. Perhaps a sensible request for someone who thinks they are the almighty saviour, but it had to be scary for my mom to know she HAD to trust me because she was an ocean away. To be truthful, she had to trust Andy, and he did very admirably in a time of crisis. This trust concern will be a theme for my mother and me. Fast forward ten years and we will hear Mom’s final answer.