Nights are hard...

The last few nights I've been waking up a lot. Up at midnight, 1, 3, 4, 5:30. Historically I've been a great sleeper. No matter what's going on in my life I've always managed to think of bed as a safe haven from the troubles of the world. Get in bed, read for a few minutes and - bam! - a good night's sleep ensues. Since my neck biopsy, not so much. I wake up in the middle of the night - several times - and feel wide awake. No neck pain, just awake, lying in bed, thinking that being asleep would be much  more fun. And of course, in the wee hours of the night it's always easy to think the dark thoughts - what's going on inside my body, where has the cancer spread, how hard will the treatments be, will the cancer be responsive to the chemo, etc. Susan's given me a couple of really appropriate guided meditations that I'm keeping by my bed. These prayers talk about how my cells are all happy, healthy and doing the right thing. Great positive thinking. So I think on those and practice letting go of anguish, quieting the monkey mind, taking comfort from Susan being right next to me in the bed.

OK, off to work! On Friday we got the first little nibble of what I'm sure will be a zillion pieces of medical insurance/bill information. Hmm, I think I need a content management system to take care of all of this! (Groan...) Perhaps I will setup a scanning subsystem, define a taxonomy, write a little ad-hoc HL7 protocol to interface with the various hospital systems, write some reporting sub modules to keep track of how all the money is flowing. Yeah! Or maybe I'll just file the papers in my filing cabinet, send documentation in for the co-pays and get on with life. Probably the latter...