Chapter 2: “Godzilla” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

What exactly is a waking dream?

I’m glad you asked.

I’m no doctor. The following was communicated to me by a bona fide, certified medical professional in Columbia, South Cackalacky:

“You have Narcolepsy.”

“No, doc. I don’t fall asleep randomly. Quite the opposite. I haven’t slept properly in months. I have Insomnia. In fact, I’m on day four right now of zero sleep. I think. Could be five. Why is there a schnitzel sticking out of your ear?”

“A what? Think of Narcolepsy as a form of Insomnia. You also have Cataplexy. What you are experiencing is called waking dreams.”

“That would explain the Lizard People.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“Anyway, Mr. Bjorn, you can’t take sleep medications of any kind. Not even melatonin. They induce hypnopompic hallucinations.”

“Hypno-what?”

The clinician next mentioned something about the frazzled marriage between the diurnal and nocturnal glands in my brain—or so that’s what I heard. Apparently my circadian clock was ticking on a pending divorce. Something supercalifragilistic-suprachiasmatic. Ganglia Schmanglia. Then she casually mentioned this was happening a lot lately to folks who’d had COVID.

That last part I processed clearly.

By 2021, I had already contracted COVID twice. (I’ve had it four times as of the drafting of this chapter.) At the time, it was a frontline hazard of being a public librarian plus a rideshare driver during a plague. Now it’s Abaddon.

That’s when the schnitzel in her ear continued the conversation in a thick German accent.

“Basically, you’re dreaming while awake. Here’s a book called Wide Awake and Dreaming. It will depress the hell out of you. There’s only one medication we can prescribe for you to sleep—who knows what it will do for your waking dreams. It is practically guaranteed to destroy your life far worse than it already is.”

“The book or the medicine?”

“Hmm. Both. But at least the book is written by a Harvard Law School graduate, so you’re in good company.”

“Wait. The medicine is worse than me drinking a handle of bourbon every night to conk me out?”

“Oh, far worse. Good luck!”

Mind you, she was just one of many quacks who didn’t consider prescribing me Trazodone, a rather standard, off-label medication for insomniacs with adverse sleep medication reactions.

I wish my mind hadn’t been so focused on imaginary breaded veal at the time. I might have been able to figure out Trazodone on my own and save you the trouble of buying this book.

When I was finally given Trazodone in a Bronx hospital emergency room four years later—the same night I threw up a gallon of blood in my apartment—I slept 16 straight hours. I’ve been sleeping like a hibernating bear ever since. Either my ER doctor had one helluva lullaby bedside manner, or Trazodone works.

I haven’t met a doctor in the Big Apple, from orthopedist to ophthalmologist, who hasn’t asked the following question when I present my Long COVID-related sleep history:

“Why the hell didn’t they try Trazodone?”

My reply: “I don’t know. I think they all own stock in Jim Beam.”

And people wonder why I keep calling South Carolina the armpit of the devil’s asshole.

Even among my 30-plus, stellar BronxCare providers, they have to dig hard into their med school memory banks when I bring up Cataplexy. Cataplexy is rather uncommon. The National Institutes of Health concurs:

“Narcolepsy Type 1 (with cataplexy) affects 12.6/100,000 individuals.”

Some context on that. Imagine the annual football rivalry between The Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines. Let’s put it in Ohio Stadium, which has a seating capacity of 102,780.

See those 12 sleep-deprived zombies zigzagging near the 50-yard line, desperately avoiding a pack of velociraptors no one else can see? That’s Team Cataplexy. You are one of the other 102,768 fans who want security to cart us off the field so play can continue.

If you think feathered, garbage-disposal predators in a football stadium are scary, wait’ll you get a load of what was waiting for me on moving day—on the George Washington Bridge.

Shit—did the beer in that plastic cup start vibrating? Let’s keep it down, people.

While I am not a physician, I am a state-certified librarian and veteran information researcher. During the Pandemic and its aftermath, however, my ability to educate myself on my complex condition was a tad compromised.

I was working two jobs seven days a week, caretaking a disabled parent, rearing a pandemic-bound middle schooler mostly by myself—all while self-medicating from sleep deprivation, stumbling through Brain Fog and Scooby-Dooing my way from door to door past serial killers and bloodthirsty, anthropomorphic scaly beasts.

Now I’m nine months into full sleep deprivation recovery and no longer a lobotomized squirrel on autopilot. Let us don our fact-finding pith helmets and proceed to the information jungle!

Do I have Long Covid, Insomnia and Cataplexy?

Yes. I am formally diagnosed with Long Covid, or Long-Covid-19, as well as Insomnia. As for Cataplexy, it remains only a strong suspect.

Sometimes my health seems like a twisted game of Clue. Colonel Cataplexy, in the Hypothalamus, with a Lesion! Meanwhile, Professor Narcolepsy seems to have slipped from the board Scot free.

Who knows about any of this? Maybe I’m on Team Cataplexy. Maybe I’m just a drunk fan in the stands.

Pretty sure that beer vibrated again.

I recognize sharing one’s Personal Health Information with the general public is unorthodox, but this one’s for Team Humanity:

As a bonus, bear witness that I also have two congenital blood-clotting disorders. Both my knees are shot. Again, I am Autistic. And, as previously mentioned, I’m still a pain in the ass.

You may be wondering why I keep mentioning my diagnoses over and over. Because every person who has abandoned me the past several years thinks I’m making this shit up.

Look above—there it is! Please believe me! My doctors have the bloodwork and X-rays!

How many people have, or have had, Long Covid?

According to the CDC, as of February 2024, a lot: at least 6.9% of U.S. adults. So let’s round it to many millions.

Are sleep disorders common for Long Covid patients?

Yes. Here’s a helpful link and quote from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NIH):

“A systematic review conducted in 2022 reported that sleep-related signs/symptoms are highly prevalent, affecting approximately 52%…of LC19 patients (LC19Ps).”

Yet millions again!

Whether or not you have Cataplexy, what the hell is it? And I thought Narcolepsy meant you fall asleep spontaneously. Wait, there’s a Cataplexy Type I and II? What gives?

I know, it’s confusing. Let’s begin with Narcolepsy. WebMD says it best:

“Narcolepsy is a problem with your sleep-wake cycles. … People who have type 1 narcolepsy also have sudden muscle weakness with strong emotions, which is called cataplexy.”

From the same article, here is one of the major symptoms of Narcolepsy:

“Seeing things that aren’t real, called hallucinations.”

Over at the Mayo Clinic, we learn about two Narcolepsy symptoms I experienced nightly for nearly five years:

“Sleep paralysis. People with narcolepsy may experience sleep paralysis. During sleep paralysis, the person can’t move or speak while falling asleep or upon waking. The paralysis is usually brief — lasting a few seconds or minutes. But it can be scary.”

No shit it’s scary. Before booze kicked in every night, I would enter a state of sleep paralysis, and my mind’s eye was flooded with a PowerPoint of personal memories at breakneck speed. I literally couldn’t move nor control the lightspeed slideshow, and it seemed to go on for hours, not seconds or minutes.

It was like the scene in A Clockwork Orange when Alex’s eyes are forced open to behold unimaginable horror on a television screen. Don’t forget: I’m also a childhood rape victim with PTSD from a host of family traumatic events that most Hollywood producers would consider implausible and inappropriate for any audience.

Trust me. You do not want to be forced to watch my life every evening on fast-forward.

From the same Mayo Clinic article:

“Hallucinations. Sometimes people see things that aren’t there during sleep paralysis. Hallucinations also may happen in bed without sleep paralysis. These are called hypnagogic hallucinations if they happen as you fall asleep. They’re called hypnopompic hallucinations if they happen upon waking” {italics mine}.

My Hypnagogic Hallucinations are the memory-processing variety described above. Our brain processes long-term and short-term memories while we sleep. Most folks are blissfully unaware of this, except when the mind trick-or-treats us with a dream on one or more subjects—at least that’s how I understand it.

Try experiencing memory processing during sleep paralysis, and you’ll pray for a Komodo dragon to attack you with a regular nightmare instead.

I’m happy to report that my Hypnagogic Hallucinations mostly stopped when Trazodone began delivering consistent, well-deserved Zs. I pray to Christ on a schnitzel I never have one again.

As for my Hypnopompic Hallucinations, here is my layman’s definition:

WHAT THE HOLY FUCKING GODDAMN
MOTHERFUCKING SHIT IS GOING ON?!?!?!?!?!?!
MOM, THE RECLINER JUST ATE BOTH CATS!!!!!!

Dangit. Gotta keep my voice down, don’t want to wake it.

Again, WebMD:

“Sleep hallucinations are different from dreams, and they feel more real than dreams do. You may know instantly when you wake from a dream that you were just dreaming but aren’t any more. In a sleep hallucination, you may not be able to figure out what is real and what isn’t for several minutes.”

I know you’re dying to know more about these organic virtual reality Hypnopompic shitstorms. Hold on, we’re almost there. Just read softly from this point, okay?

As for Cataplexy, it’s “sudden loss of muscle tone”—from the Mayo Clinic “Narcolepsy” article above. Basically, the bottom falls out from one of your muscle groups. Maybe your head drops, your knee buckles. Your speech goes wonky. If your dick goes limp, that’s probably just the whiskey you took to fall asleep.

This does happen to me. I’m talking about Cataplexy. But I also have Autism. I tick sometimes. When I’m anxious, my speech bottles up. And I have noticeable neck spasms moments before I doze off—ask my romantic partners how annoying this is.

In the end, who the hell can separate the PTSD from the Autism from the Insomnia from the Brain Fog?

Allow me to paraphrase one of the wisest psychologists I know:

“Labels don’t matter in the bedroom nor boardroom, nor on the boardwalk nor sidewalk. What matters is impairment.”

I’m just happy to be well-rested, tapping away at my keyboard. And—whispers—lizard-free.

Does alcohol cause sleep hallucinations?

Yes. See Chapter 18.

But imagine. You’re strung out from parenting, caretaking and trying to make ends meet while earnestly processing a lifetime of horror. You contract COVID, which is followed immediately by the worst case of Insomnia, including both kinds of narcoleptic hallucinations, for which no doctor in a piss-poor state has a cure.

You know you will die without sleep eventually. You’ve stood in that threshold several times.

Do you (a) curl up and die while your innards are devoured by an imaginary Japanese giant salamander, or (b) self-medicate to sleep?

I chose bourbon. And hard lemonade.

I also eventually chose to leave South Carolina and find real doctors, ironically, in the City that Never Sleeps.

To my credit, the moment slumber appeared, I chose rehab too.

How many people in the world have Autism, Long-Term Covid, PTSD from childhood trauma, Antiphospholipid Syndrome, Prothrombin Gene Mutation, Brain Fog, ~Cataplexy and are pains in the ass?

Probably just me. But don’t forget my torn-up knees.

I promised no section of this book would be more than six pages. This is page nine. I lied. I’m sorry this chapter is so technical. Can we think of it like those droning cetology passages in Moby Dick?

I promise there’s a sperm whale yet to come.

Here we are, and we still haven’t even opened the door on Brain Fog.

According to the CDC, Long COVID has more than 200 symptoms. Thank God I only have two. Unless you count Eczema. But who’s going to write a book called Brooklyn Blisters?

That Wuhan street meat sure was something.

Thanks for hanging in there. Any last questions?

Why the hoary hell is this chapter titled “Godzilla”?!?!

Shh. I said to keep your voice down. Best get below ground. I can see the Hudson River stirring.

Well, if you made it this far, you gotta read Chapter 2 Continued: “GODZILLA 🦖 FINALLY.”