Red-eye Limbo

For the fourth time in a year or so, there was a medical emergency on my red-eye flight home from the West Coast. Each time the lights have come up, the flight attendants have called for medical help, and I have been awakened from a decent sleep. Now compared to someone whose health requires this kind of urgent attention, being awake isn’t so bad. And fortunately none of these crises turned grave–no diversions to an airport on the Great Plains, no extreme measures taken on board. The common themes: an older person who had too much alcohol, not enough medications, or both.

But if I may mutter under my fully-alert breath for just a moment: once I’m up on a red-eye, I’m up for a while. And that’s a bummer, because I don’t want to be sleepy when I get home to my family. I want to feel like I got at least a half-night’s sleep. But once thoughts like “I wish I were asleep” start floating around my mind, they are like a searchlight shining into my eyes–the more I think about wanting to sleep, the more awake I become. Tonight I have tried my usual remedies. First the outstanding Nap26 track Easy2Sleep, which often helps me fall asleep during overnight flights. Then some music from my iPhone; tonight’s choice is “The Hurting” by Tears for Fears (“Is it an horrific dream?” indeed). Then I decided it was best not to fight any longer, so out comes the MacBook Pro and here I am, writing away the evening/morning.

This interruption is harder than the others because I’ve been gone for ten days, so I really want to feel a bit rested when I get home. And I’ve only got about 28 hours from touchdown at RDU until I head off to Ireland on Sunday (I know, frequent-flier problem). This means I especially want to spend as many of those hours as possible present with Vicki and Val. Best case: I am so tired by the time my ATL-DUB flight takes off Sunday night that I sleep across the Atlantic. For now, I sit between coasts and time zones and hope drowsiness returns soon.