Death by Insomnia

Fun find from Maud Starr on Etsy

I’ve managed to squeeze in three hours of sleep. I was up at 3:00am Googling the effects of sleep deprivation, so I know for a fact that my cognitive abilities are impaired.  My facilities have to be impaired If I’m about to pull back the veil and give you a peek at the reality of having an Asperger’s child.

Most people assume the biggest challenge of Asperger’s is the difficulty these individuals have with social situations. True, my son did have a series of mini meltdowns at the last big family gathering. In his defense, there were about fifty people, many of whom he’d never met. As soon as these stressful events pass, life pretty much goes back to normal.  My son goes back on the computer. He asks me again, why the kids in the neighborhood are screaming. In his head screaming signals trouble. So the high pitched squeals of summer play both worry and annoy him.

Worry.  Now that’s the big one.  Most people with Asperger’s deal with anxiety. My son’s is extreme, and fortunately is fairly controlled with a low dose of an antidepressant. But what happens when the doctor doesn’t return your calls about refills and then the pharmacy fails to contact you when your order is ready? Then you skip more days than needed and sometimes things can get a little hairy.

Sleep is the first thing to go in my son’s case. He’ll go more than 24 hours without sleep and then start worrying about why he feels funny. As the sleepless hours tick by he starts googling every psychiatric diagnosis known to man and rushes to me, asking if I think he might have a multiple personality disorder. I tell him to look up ‘sleep deprivation,’ but he’s so caught up in how the whole multiple personality thing works, that he totally ignores me.

Okay. Let’s go back to 3:00 am when I was on my iphone reading my son the laundry list of sleep deprivation symptoms. I’d made the small mistake, as one is apt to do when one is sleep deprived themself, and was reading a report on the use of sleep deprivation as a form of torture.  Not exactly bedtime reading material for a kid that freaks out over the kids out front playing on their bicycles. I managed to skip past the part of the report where every single puppy in lab experiments died from lack of sleep. Seriously? Who kills puppies for sleep studies? This is a rhetorical question people. Instead of counting sheep waiting for my son to doze off, I’m counting dead puppies.  My son’s anxiety slips under my skin.

Sleep deprivation was popular during the Spanish Inquisition, witch hunts, and more modern information gathering missions. My mind wanders from Guantanamo Bay to our local prisons. I think of the less than human animals there, caged for violent crimes, especially crimes against children.  The dead puppies bark in my head. “Why do those bastards get any rest?” they yip.  Shit. I can understand what they’re saying. When did I turn into Doctor Dolittle? Am I delusional? Which psychiatric disorder would my son diagnose me with? I glance over to check on him. He’s asleep.  He looks so peaceful. We’ve made it through another night. It’s too soon to worry about tomorrow.