By Trina Machacek
Nocturnal lagophthalmos! What in the great big world is that? First let me tell you that if you have it, I don’t want to come upon you when you sleep. It would be too creepy, even for me. Actually, nocturnal lagophthalmos is the big word term for sleeping with your eyes open. See. Told you, creepy.
Trina Machacek
Some time ago I was having trouble getting to sleep. It could be that I don’t turn the TV off when I go to bed. Then I thought about old movies where the ladies would wear those sleeping masks, and I bought one. Pink, of course. Soft and fluffy on one side and smooth and slick on the other. It worked perfectly when I put it on. But. Yes, a sleepy time “but.” I noticed that at a point when I wore the mask, I was not shutting my eyes. It was a weird phenomenon. Could I be a nocturnal lagophthalmos-er? Not me. Too creepy. I’ll do weird, but not creepy.
Turns out that if I was sleeping with my eyes open, I would have noticed it in the mornings. With dry eyes that would feel all scratchy and stuff. I didn’t have that symptom. Wearing that mask though, kind of felt like my eyes never closed. I was sleeping great though. Who knew ladies in the 1940’s had such a secret about sleeping.
It’s the falling asleep part of sleep that we all sometimes have trouble with. Sometimes we just want to be taken back to the days of getting a piece of carpet, a little carton of milk and two cookies to entice us all to fall asleep. But to do that at bedtime instead of mid-afternoon. At my age I have no trouble stopping in the middle of the day and taking a nap. Sadly, sometimes it’s the nocturnal part of the sleep pattern that is the problem.
Unfortunately we are tempted to bring some sort of electronic device to bed with us. I quit doing that. No phone to tempt me. It gets plugged in and left at the other end of the house, to be ready in the morning. My friends tell me I need to keep it close in case of an overnight emergency. I throw caution to the wind and hope that I will sleep through any overnight escapades that could befall me. No, electronics are not to blame for my sleepless nights.
Then what could it be. NO! Not the TV! Yes, the TV. That little revelation of television brought me to the sleeping mask stage of life. Over a few days there were conversations about getting to sleep. It amazed me to learn of a few things we as humans might do to get to sleep. Most definitely a glass of warm milk was not on anyone’s list. There was talk of the skim of gunk that floats on the top of a warm glass of milk. The skim of scum turned people away from that idea. Of course if one were to add chocolate. Maybe a squirt of whipped cream making a luscious cup of hot chocolate, that might be a way to get warm milk down at bedtime.
One interesting idea had to do with relaxing. I said I could relax as suggested, if I could leave my television on. The idea is to lay comfortably and concentrate on getting things to relax. It takes more than one try to tell your feet to float or relax. Oh, it’s doable. Kind of weirdly it works. You tell your feet to relax then move up to your shins or calves and then knees and on up. I of course found myself singing, “and the foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone. OOOOOH, look at those bones.” Rest assured, that will not put you to sleep. I was up to the hip bone before I remembered that I wanted to sleep not sing.
It’s good to know that even if you have the worst case of insomnia ever, eventually you will sleep. Hopefully you will not be in competition with Robert McDonald, who stayed awake for 18 days, 21 hours, and 40 minutes (453 hours and 40 minutes) in 1986. He was going for the world record. And won.
After around 24 hours you could start to act like you’re punch drunk. Yes, your brain tells the rest of you that you are losing control of yourself and things start to go a bit wonky after a day.
Not to worry though. Google says at some point we will fall asleep, not die. That’s good news. That “not enough sleep look” we’ve probably all experienced? Where you look in the mirror and say, “Ugh, I look like death warmed over.” Not a good look—so go take a nap!
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, North of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
