IT’S ONE IN THE MORNING and I am wide awake. My head hurts. I’m restless, unable to fall back asleep after awakening to use the bathroom. I’ve only slept 2.5 hours. A long night looms. My efforts to settle in and resume sleeping aren’t working. Randy needs his rest so I head to the living room and curl into the recliner.
I’m feeling jittery. I switch on the table lamp, pick up a thick coloring book from the floor, pull out the 64-crayon box of Crayolas. Soon I am rhythmically coloring a cat with an orange crayon that is way too reddish-tinted for a domesticated feline. Maybe a tiger. But at this hour I don’t care. I just want to feel some calm and methodically working crayons across paper helps.
When I finish coloring the cat clutching a bouquet of flowers, I decide it’s time to try sleep again. I pull two fleece throws around me, snuggle in for some shut eye. I intentionally aim to relax my body, quiet my mind. I can’t. I hear a pleated shade in the dining room click against the window frame in the gentle wind of the night. I hear the hum of the refrigerator. Every noise is amplified.
By now, I guess the time to be 3 am. I need my sleep. My head still aches. I am overtired, exhausted. I decide to move to the couch. I clear the space of Randy’s cellphone and extra pillows and yesterday’s newspaper. I hesitate to lie down, apprehensive about the vertigo that comes when I need to get up. As soon as I’m lying down, I notice the curtain is not completely pulled shut, letting in a sliver of light. I ease myself up to avoid dizziness, walk across the dark living room, pull the fabric together. Back to the sofa. The red and blue lights of a passing ambulance pulse through the room. I remain on edge, alert, unable to achieve what I most want and need. Sleep.
THEN COMES BIRDSONG
Eventually I fall into a fitful sleep. I awaken well before dawn. Slowly, morning is rising. I hear the first birds tweeting, only a cardinal’s trill distinguishable like a solo in the birdsong. Occasionally, vehicles pass by on our arterial street, an indication that daybreak is upon us. Traffic increases as time passes. Still, I’m hoping for sleep in this morning dark.
But it doesn’t come. The rectangle window in the east-facing front door lets the spotlight of morning into the room. That light follows a direct line to my head. The head that still hurts.
Soon I hear Randy rustling, up and getting ready for work. It’s 6:45 am. Then I slowly ease myself up, conscious of my need to proceed slowly. After only four hours or so of sleep, I am up for the day.
DREADED MORNING NECESSITY
In an hour, after breakfast, I will remove the lid from a medication bottle, spill six tablets onto the counter, swallow two at a time with water, the bitter taste lingering on my tongue. These are the cause of my insomnia, my restlessness, my jitters. Prednisone. A steroid designed to calm the immune system and reduce inflammation.
My body needs calming, healing as I deal with feeling off-balance, vertigo, double vision, headaches, ear pain and fullness, tinnitus and more, likely triggered by a virus I had in January, according to my medical team. Viruses and I do not do well. I lost my hearing in my right ear in 2011 during an episode of sudden sensory hearing loss caused by a virus. Thankfully this latest virus is affecting only my deaf ear and not my good ear. Otherwise I would be deaf.
Prednisone and I do not do well together. I took it in 2011 and in 2005 during a 3-month severe case of whooping cough. I am hyper sensitive to the steroid’s side effects of restlessness and insomnia. Yet, I understand that if I want to reduce the inflammation in my body (in my 8th cranial nerve), I need to stick with the 14-day regimen. I want to feel well, to function better, to do the things I love. I hope this med works.
A neurology visit is scheduled in late May, the earliest I could be seen. Physical therapy is planned for my balance issues and vestibular neuronitis. Many times throughout the day I remind myself that I can do this. And when I’m unable to sleep or feel overwhelmed by the restlessness side effects of Prednisone, I will reach for the coloring book, pull out the Crayola box and rhythmically work crayons across paper.
© Copyright 2023 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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