A couple of days ago Papa quit sleeping. For the last couple of years Pops has kind of been the champion of sleep. He sleeps at night and then takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap. We all get in on the afternoon nap. Even guys who just drop by the house at nap time will flop down on the couch and obediently go to sleep. It kind of makes me wonder why we are not a napping society as a whole. Other than six year-olds, everyone seems to think it's a good idea.
But, back to our problem. This was getting to be a huge problem for us. He'd been awake so long that he was starting to hallucinate. He's been awake for two and a half days. So I called the Kaiser home health line for advice. Their advice? Take him to the emergency room. Really? The emergency room? I thought that maybe they didn't understand the problem, because as anyone who has been to an emergency room knows, it isn't a place that's conducive to sleep. But no, that was the only advice they would give.
I couldn't bring myself to take this advice. It sounded way too counter intuitive. When he was in ER a week ago, they kept him awake all night and then put him in the hospital where they continued to wake him up every little while during the day. It seems like the last place on earth that you'd want to take someone who needs to sleep.
We ended up talking to a pharmacist who told us to try Benedryl. That worked and he went to sleep. He's still sleeping now and it's almost noon. It's too bad that there isn't a mom line to call, she would have known better than to hand out crappy advice like "take him to the ER".
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