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Counting Sheep
By Neil Peterson | January 13, 2009
“The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
According to a recent article by Jessica Yadegaran of the Contra Costa Times, sleep disorders are on the rise. The article reports that approximately 66 percent of adults have trouble sleeping at least one night a week, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s latest Sleep in America Poll. Other findings of the sleep poll:
- Almost 50 percent have sleep problems almost every night
- 29 percent fell asleep or became very sleepy at work in the past month
- 36 percent have nodded off or fallen asleep while driving
- 32 percent say they only get a good night’s sleep a few nights per month
- 49 percent say they wake up feeling unrefreshed in the morning
- 33 percent say they snore at least a few nights per week
I can relate to a lot of these problems. Almost my entire life, I’ve struggled with sleep issues. I’ve dozed at the wheel too many times (once is enough!), and the number of movies, theater shows, and bridge games I’ve conked out during is embarrassingly high.
My sleep problems reached their zenith about a decade ago. I was in the process of getting my new transportation consulting business, Transportation Solutions, off the ground, and my first client was a large land developer in the Philippines. This company wanted me in Manila full time for the next three years.
Yikes! I thought. What about my kids? I had always been determined to be the best father to my son and daughter, and my recent divorce had not changed my resolve. I remained committed to my children and took seriously our agreed-upon 50-50 custody, which worked out to two weeks a month with me, two weeks a month with their mom.
I desperately wanted the contract, but the decision was easy: My kids came first.
I ended up emailing a proposal to the leaders of this company, explaining my dilemma and suggesting an arrangement in which I would fly back and forth to the states every two weeks so I could be with the kids, at the company’s expense. To my utter surprise, they accepted my proposal. I was delighted at the outcome-a chance to build my business while still keeping my commitment to be an excellent father to my kids.
However, while I realized that flying across the Pacific every two weeks would be taxing, I had no idea just how brutal the impact would be on me over the long haul. On the first day of each month, I flew to the Philippines. It was approximately twenty-four hours from door to door with fifteen and one half hours of actual flight time. And since I was crossing the International Date Line, there was a time change of sixteen hours.
At the end of three years, I was a walking zombie!
Finally, at the age of fifty-four, I signed up for testing at Providence Hospital’s sleep disorder clinic in Seattle. The process was elaborate and thorough, complete with a sleep diary, an unbelievably lengthy questionnaire that took hours to complete, an interview by a medical assistant, and an overnight stay at the clinic so that my sleep patterns could be monitored in person. (This last step was by far the most exciting part of the process, complete with video cameras to record my sleep patterns and various machines I was hooked up to. It was like something out of the movies. Twenty different color tubes, most of them close to two-feet long, were attached to my head, held on by some special glue. You should have seen the looks I got when I went down to the hospital cafeteria!)
Shortly after my overnight stay I returned to the sleep center to meet with the doctor and get the results. My doctor said that, in all of his years, he had never seen someone as screwed up as I was. My body was so messed up that he couldn’t even diagnose the problem. My constant travel back and forth to the Philippines had thrown my body for a loop, and we needed to give it time to settle back into to a more normal pattern.
Great, I thought to myself, I’m a freak.
To this day, I still struggle with falling asleep during inopportune times. I know that sleep is important-that eight hours a night is recommended for heart health, emotional well-being, and so forth. But I’ve also learned that some things-like my kids-are worth losing sleep over.
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