My DiaryLand Diary

2007-05-11 - 1:31 p.m.

Another Sleepwalking Adventure
It's about time someone updated her d-land page!
Last week I did it again, sleepwalked that is, this time injuring myself, although even that didn't wake me, so the trauma center thought perhaps I passed out for a while, and asked me all kinds of memory questions, plus I got a nice cat scan to complete my early morning fun.
I'd gone to bed early Sunday night and slept well until I found myself standing up in the kitchen peering into the mirror in the dim light - it was about three in the morning - and I saw something in the middle of my forehead and touched it and looked down and there was blood all over my hands and arms. I said to myself, Self, put something on and walk to the emergency room now. The hospital is three blocks away. They cleaned me up and asked me questions like, what day is this, and are you sure you weren't a victim of domestic violence, and what hospital are you in at this time - which I got wrong, because I said Mt. Sinai instead of Metropolital, being they both start with an M. Then they stuck needles of lidocaine into my face, complaining that most people need only one, but they were going on three, that I seemed to have a low pain threshold. Excuse me for using up your lidocaine! I got ten big black stitches and the cat scan and they sent me home with a script for bacitracin and a script for tylenol. It was eerie walking back to my apartment at half past six AM when the rest of the city was just waking up, the birds singing, businessmen passing with their morning cups of coffee.
My face immediately swelled up like a rhinocerous and I was in pain to say the least so I called in sick.
I went in to work later in the week and made an appointment to see my own doctor to get the stitches out and get his advice on this sleepwalking thing. He had given me an earlier p-script for valium and said I should take some each night to knock me out, and also recommended a Night-Walkers monitor you clip to yourself...if you get up from the bed it sounds a beeping alarm to warn you to wake up.
Lorraine at work thinks this is very funny. Her dad had one of those devices in the nursing home. She says if taking a walk to the next room and falling flat on my face didn't wake me up, how's a little beep going to do it??? I tend to agree. We'll see how the valium works out for now.