Dear 5am, I Hate You

For several weeks now I've been waking up in the middle of the night, often more than once, and at least one of these around 5am. Sometimes it's 4:30am, sometimes 5:30am. All in all, it's pretty safe to say you will find me awake during the 5 o'clock hour. Obviously I have nothing against the actually hour but what is going on at that time.

When I first got home from the hospital and was waking up around 5am, I believe it had to do with when I was due to take my next dose of pain killers. I've been taking two types of pain killers since my surgery. One I take every 4 hours, the other I take every 6 hours. Most of the time the two are staggered throughout the day and night but at 6am and 6pm I take them both at the same time. This means the pain killers are both at their weakest right before 6 o'clock. Yes, 5pm is often a less than enjoyable hour for me as well. The big difference is that I'm not trying to sleep at that time and likely have other things going on to distract me. Although it makes sense that I was waking up because my medication had worn off, the pain wasn't all that bad and I would take the pills and go back to sleep.

Since the problem with my foot started up, 5am has become somewhat of a nightmare for me. I'm sure I'm waking up for all the same reasons as I mentioned above, but now I have this added problem. Now when I wake up with the lack of pain killers in my system, my foot is often in extreme pain. This makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to fall back asleep. Like I said in my previous post, an ice pack can sometimes give me some minor relief from this pain. My 5am wake ups have become so bad that I put a cooler containing ice packs beside my bed before going to bed. This way I have one on hand at 5am when I need it. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. Unfortunately some nights result in me swearing under my breath as I try to bare the pain.

Thankfully, last night when I woke up around the 5 o'clock hour, I was able to fall back asleep reasonable quick. No swearing involved. I'm hoping I've hit a turning point of some sort. If each night is just a fraction better than the last, I'll be happy.