What I learned from the Longest Night in History
I was drifting pleasantly in towards dreamland. My mind was at rest; my heart rate had finally slowed… only to be awakened suddenly by florescent lights in my room. When I say my room, I really mean our room. You see, I was lying in a hospital bed, sharing my once-emptying room with a new tenant.
Thus began the longest night in hospital history.
A few things about my lovely neighbor. She was elderly and I assumed she would be awake to get her night meds, and then the lights would be shut off, allowing me to return to hard-earned slumber. I was wrong. So very wrong.
My neighbor was confused and very loud. The lights were turned on so many times in the course of the next hour that the nurses stopped turning them off altogether. Moans and yells were issued from the other side of the blue curtain separating our two beds.
I'll spare you the details, but a commode and some four letter words were being used across that curtain. With tears of frustration and desperation, I pulled off my headphones and gave up on sleep altogether.
Months later, it is with a huge amount of gratitude that I pull up the covers on my own comfy bed in my own quiet bedroom. One of the worst nights of my life will always remind me to be grateful for the little things – because they really aren't all that little.