It's funny how that works... you get a morning you're able to sleep in... and you even want to sleep beyond that sleep in time... so you do. You hit snooze a bazillion times and then finally drag your butt out of bed at 9:24. That's plenty of time to get to work by 10:30, so there are no worries there. There's just one... well... two small problems. The first is that you're more tired even than the day before when you slept 6 hours or even a little less than that. The second is that you awaken with a splitting headache that almost 2 hours later ibuprofen has failed to kill.
You get up... you stumble to the restroom and the coffee shop on in the 40 degree chilling fog... barely moving at all. The warm coffee feels good in your hands on the minute and a half walk back to your room, though, and you're not so cold anymore. You already had breakfast in your room stocked for this day knowing you'd never get up by 8 on a Tuesday morning. Well... actually you DID get up at 4:45... but following the Skype date you relocated back to your bed for more precious Z's. The sleep feels so good you just want it to last forever... the whole day even perhaps! This is a telling sign that you have a MASSIVE sleep debt you've built up, and it's one that won't be erased anytime soon... not by a day off... not by a late morning... not by sleeping an entire day even! No... this sleep debt must be widdled away just like paying down a credit card... a little at a time each week. Unfortunately, over here you don't get to pay off any of it very often. Throughout the week it accumulates... probably around 2 hours a day... until you get your day off where you might make 2 of those hours back. On the late morning you might make 1 or 2 of them back as well. So that still leaves you 6 in the hole at best. It's really greater than that... over the 18 week period, though, since for the first 8 weeks there were no days off. There was, for awhile, only one late day as well. You accumulated 10-14 hours of debt those weeks. How much is estimated as of today one might ask? My best guess is somewhere between 150-200 hours!
Therein lies the question of the day. What are the health impacts of our time over here in the desert? If I'm feeling this way certainly there are MANY others who are feeling this way as well. Nobody really knows what the long term impacts are of losing this much sleep over an extended period of time. Sure there are studies done, but none are iron clad conclusive save one thing... your immune system WILL be weakened. Perhaps this is why my body was unable to fight off the infection I'm currently still fighting. There's no definitive proof of any such thing. Maybe I was going to get it either way, but you have to wonder... what if?
There are thousands of military members who come home from deployments that are really never the same as they were before they left. Granted that has a lot to do with seeing death and/or causing death (since outside the confines of the safety of the base environment it's generally kill or be killed). There are other impacts, however, that tend to go unnoticed. There are impacts on people's families during every long separation. People are creatures of habit for the most part, and part of that habit changes for both the ones who leave and the ones who stay behind. Sometimes those changes are so great that famililes and marriages disintegrate... at times even before the member has a chance to get home to save it. Some thrive on it, but that is a rather small percentage of people considering humans have an innate need for social interaction.
I'm not even talking about the serious stuff here... like PTSD or TBIs. Those are things that are well beyond the scope of anything "every day" that happens. I'm talking about the spouse who becomes so independent while the other is away that he or she is unable to adapt once they return. I'm talking about missing 6 months of your little baby boy or girl growing up during the time that they change the most. I'm still talking about the loss of months worth of vital sleep as well.
I don't have any ideas on a solution because we simply do the job we set out to do professionally, and we do it well. I suppose one could simply do nothing at all during their 6 months of deployment and accumulate little or no sleep debt by going to bed right after work and/or the evening meal and sleeping in till the latest possible time. That, however, is not living, and then you have the mental impacts of that to deal with along with the fact that you didn't communicate with ANYONE back home for 6 months in that scenario. It's a vicious circle. We are all each other's support system here along with all of our friends and families back home, and we take care of each other the best we can throughout our time here.
The job we do is a good one... and we have done it extremely well since day one of setting foot here in this foreign land! That is something to take with you when it's time to go from here in just 8 1/2 short weeks. This is the middle of week 19, and although the time is still flying by, it's doing so at a much more tiring and pace. Just the thought of sitting on an airplane for 12 hours straight actually sounds GOOD! There are no responsibilities there... no alarm clocks... no deadlines... if you want to sleep (and if you're able) there's ample time to do it. When that day comes it will be a welcome one for all of us, and then we will have to work our way back into the grind of daily life back in Idaho. Of course, that doesn't sound all that bad. :)
Peace, Love, and Poker
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