We all have that one thing we need to be okay. A tidy house. Cardio. Diet Mountain Dew. A washed car. Vanderpump Rules.
My thing is sleep. If everything else goes to hell, I’ll be fine. If I’ve had eight hours of sleep.
By the end of residency, sleep was my Alamo. The cavalry was coming. The town was on fire. The sky was black. Grasping for agency and having lost everything else, I bunkered down behind sleep. Without sleep, how could I step into the open, dodge the bullets, and plot my survival? I couldn’t; so I slept as much as I could and preserved a fighting chance to save my life.
Ever since I quit medicine—my wife may contest this—I’ve had periods without sleep obsession, even stretches of sleep equanimity. But I’ve also slid back into its grips occasionally, coming unhinged if I sleep for less than seven hours for two nights in a row. I write to you as a humbled man.
Sleep’s my thing and maybe I’ll always be like this and maybe… I need it to be like this. If the past’s taught me anything, it’s that when I start making sleep into sacrament, something is up. And I should deal with it. Because we know how the Alamo ended.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
