Monday, December 10, 2012

Same Song, Different Verse *

* a whole lot louder and a little bit worse 

It had been several months since I last relived past real-life horrors through my dream state, so I suppose I was overdue. This one did not disappoint. It was pretty much like the real thing except that it combined elements of two separate incidents. In my dream,  I was in the girls' restroom (or women's restroom; come to think of it, I'm not sure what the sign on the door says, which is just about the only memory of the whole sordid affair that is not precise and vivid)   in the administration building of my former high school . . . with the attacker thugs present and attacking me . . . but there was also smoke, which  allowed me to simultaneously relive the two prior nightmares of my real  life.

Now that I'm awake and cognizant that my dream was just a dream, my preference would be to deal with it myself,  probably by turning on my bedroom TV and channel-surfing for the rest of the night. When I have such a dream, however, I typically  wake up everyone else in the house, and sometimes everyone in one or both of the houses on either side as well. This time I only woke up the inhabitants of my own home and one of the two adjacent houses. It could have been worse; I might have been sleeping in the dorm tonight, and I might have awakened three floors of sleeping residents on the night before most of the students began taking final exams. I suppose I should thank God for sparing all of them the interruption in sleep and for sparing me the humiliation of being the cause of that interruption.

Because my pulse is still at 120 beats per minute fifteen minutes after I've been awakened with those precious memories, my dad is insisting that I take one-half my normal dosage of Klonopin. He's not insisting on the full dosage because I absolutely must be dressed and ready to head out the door in  four hours and twenty minutes. I'd still rather not take even a half-dosage of a benzo in such close proximity to a final exam. My mom, however,  is saying that she'll drive me to school and drop me off at the  drop-off point closest to each classroom. She will then park, come into the room of each of the day's final exam, give a copy of my 504 plan  with the pertinent section highlighted,  to the professor or teaching assistant, then sit across the classroom from me, watching so that she can wake me up in the unlikely but conceivable event that I doze off in the middle of the final exam.

I'm most fortunate that my mom has [temporarily, anyway]  retired from her "real"career as a clinical psychologist, school psychologist, and school administrator, and can follow me all over campus in my endeavor to remain conscious throughout the three final exams I must take today. My 504 plan specifies that this service is to be provided for me on an as-needed basis, but it would be much more embarrassing, not to mention much more time-consuming, inconvenient, and sleep-depriving,  if I had to make my way to the Support and Enablement Office at the crack of dawn to make arrangements to have someone else provide my in-class wake-up service. If my mom comes to class with me,  I don't need to explain anything to anyone. She will will sit right next to the exam proctor to make it clear that she isn't there to aid and abet me in cheating on the exam, although my professors surely must know by now that I have no need to cheat, but she'll otherwise maintain as low a profile as humanly possible. Suspicions of cheating, embarrassment of having Mommy accompany me to class, and other indignities notwithstanding, I'm most appreciative of my mother's willingness to drop whatever she had planned for the day to help me over one more hurdle. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a mother so willing to sacrifice her time as my mom.

Tonight's incident was slightly unusual in that this was the very first time since the impetus and onset of my nightmares  that it was technically my own decision as to whether or not to  be medicated, as I am now a legal adult. I could have "just said no" to drugs, and I was tempted.  The fact that I am  I am eighteen, though, does little to change the reality that sometimes Daddy actually does know best.  I took the benzo.

Sweet dreams, everybody.

2 comments:

  1. I was once prescribed Klonopin for anxiety. It did nothing for me. But then, I'm a lot bigger than you are!

    Thankfully, I don't have too much trouble with anxiety anymore.

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  2. Klonopin knocks me out. Ativan is actually better for me and doesn't have as lasting an effect, but sometimes my dad has Klonopin on him and not Ativan, and he doesn't do midnight pharmacy runs.

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