Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.

Sleep - there's nothing like it. Those glorious little snatches of death. Head hits the pillow, eyes close and you drift away until morning. Or until the alarm goes off, which is always too early, no matter what time it is. Most folks take sleep for granted, because they sleep soundly. Not me. I cherish every minute of sleep, because sleep has always been like an elusive lover for me, teasing me, skipping ahead of me, just out of my reach, laughing as it goes. For years, I probably got less than four hours of sleep a night. It started when I was in my senior year of high school. I worked the graveyard shift at one of the lumber mills. In the military, you never get enough sleep. In college, it was the graveyard shift again, working full time as a janitor at the athletic center while going to school full time during the day. There followed about 15 years when I slept relatively well. Working construction will do that to you. As will working a full-time office job while teaching three or four night classes a week at the local community college.

Now, however, sleepless nights are creeping back into my life once again. It's not stress, though there certainly is a lot of that right now. Now, after all of these years, I'm being kept awake at night by my legs. That's what I said, my legs. Background: I have a degenerative neurological disorder, an hereditary form of peripheral neuropathy. That's a disease that usually strikes people with vitamin deficiency problems - diabetics, drug addicts, prisoners of war. In a small percentage of the population, though, it's hereditary. For me, a gift from my mom - the gift that keeps on taking. It's taking away the nerves in my legs and feet. Lost 75% of the sensory nerves in my feet so far, as well as most of the hair on my legs. The symptoms? Your feet burn. Feels like you're standing on an asphalt parking lot in the middle of an Arizona summer day. Then there are the spasms. They're constant. A slight jumping of the nerves in your legs. It feels kind of like when the doctor checks your reflexes, only it runs from your feet to you knees. And then you get the incessant tickly feeling in your feet, and the only way to satisfy it is to move them, preferably to rub them against each other or something else. Lastly, there's the pain. Not bad pain all over, but tiny stabbing pains, as though someone had just stuck a pin into the bottom of your foot.

None of this by itself is really all that bad. Put it all together though, and it gets pretty annoying. There's medication to help alleviate the symptoms and retard the progression of the disease, bu it doesn't eliminate all of it. And every time I get a new doctor, the first thing they wanna do is reduce the dosage. Over my protests, they tell me to try the lower dosage for a while and if the symptoms get worse, they'll increase it again. The symptoms always get worse. They're bad now. It's not quite so noticeable during the day when you're up and doing stuff, but at night, when you lay down to sleep and it's quiet and still, then you notice it. Boy do you notice it. The muscles twitch and the feet burn and tickle, until you simply wanna scream.

I didn't sleep for two nights. I was dragging at work yesterday. Last night, I finally slept out of sheer exhaustion. When the alarm went off this morning, I just couldn't face the day. I went to the computer, dashed off a quick e-mail to my boss, and then collapsed back into bed. Slept another five hours. Eleven hours total. I don't remember the last time I slept eleven hours. It felt great. Of course, tonight I'll probably lie awake again staring at the ceiling. But at least I slept last night. And that's better than nothing.