Recommended soundtrack: Breathing Underwater by Metric
Folks I recently had the great joy and privilege to come home to New Brunswick after not seeing family & friends for 2 years due to travel restrictions to mitigate COVID 19.
Some Canadians, especially those of us born on the East Coast and who live somewhere else, love a good road trip. I certainly do, having made the trek from Ontario to New Brunswick regularly since 1993. Ya. That’s a lot of kilometers friends, roughly 1,600 km each way!
I was nervous about being on major highways after an 18 month hiatus. I hadn’t left London since Christmas 2019. I was worried about how achy I would be, but especially how tired I would get.
But then something unexpected happened, I didn’t get bone tired. I didn’t reach for coffee the first leg of the drive. It was after 6pm and we drove from London, Ontario to Brockville. It’s roughly 5 hours and a third of the way. It makes the second day much more reasonable.
We arrived later than expected because traffic and life. But. I wasn’t dead tired.
The next morning I got up, packed and was on the road for an hour before we grabbed coffees and breakfast. So. Weird.
The thing is, for almost 30 years, I was the walking dead in the morning. Frighteningly tired. Every. Morning.
So I drank coffee, a lot of it. I blamed a weak will, a hedonistic personality, and a myriad of other character flaws because “everyone knows” caffeine addiction makes for terrible mornings.
But. Uh. Folks. There’s something that changed since my last road trip, regular use of a CPAP machine.
It wasn’t an easy transition. I’m now thinking I’m almost to neutral about wearing it, which is tremendous progress. I definitely don’t love it but now I am appreciative of its slow but steady support of my sleep and rest.
I still love coffee but I can wait a few hours in the morning. I have become a bit of a morning person. No one is more surprised than I!
So when we drove into my parents’ dooryard I arrived tired but not a mess. It was such a huge change. I don’t know I would have noticed if it hadn’t been so long since I had a road trip and enough CPAP time to recover from a lifetime of sleep deficits.
So I am grateful for the insight and the impact of my daily sleep routine.
As you emerged from restrictions this year did you notice something new?
Yes, have had mine for 3 years ! Dental work for 4 months triggered months of noncompliance with my CPAP ( 6 nights without it and I started back down that slippery slope.)
Got things back on track and just in time – surgeries are picking up now that there are no restrictions to the types being authorized – super busy at work and rested enough to handle the increased load.