Stupidity rating scale

Just a quick note.

There are several examples of startling stupidity in my life, this is the latest. Beware that the next four paragraphs seem like me whinging - but there is a purpose.

For the last few weeks I've been feeling fairly crap. I've lacked energy. I've had difficulty concentrating - I read stuff and it doesn't go in. I've been short tempered, and my moods are a matter of public record. I've been unenthusiastic about exercise, I've had to drop judo, I've been yawning a lot and my eyes hurt.

As a practising physician I've treated this with coffee and a determination to get my mind on the job, and shouting to myself inside my head to stop being so bloody self indulgent. I'd changed my medications, and occasionally I've wondered if I was coming down with a virus, and or if I should get my thyroid checked.

Anyhow, this morning was Saturday. I woke up at seven, got up, started studying, got about an hour done, then my eyes were hurting too much and the mental half-life of what I read was about seven seconds. So I gave up, and went back to bed.

Next thing it was early afternoon and I'd slept an extra six hours.

Appalled, I got up and got to work. But in the intervening hours a miracle had occurred. I was no longer irritable. My eyes felt fine. I had energy. I understood what I was reading. I felt great.

It was almost as if - don't laugh - that few hours of rest had cured me.

I have decided to put a name to this obscure condition, which seemed to be some sort of systemic dysregulation of multiple inflammatory markers with predominantly neurovegetitive sequelae, and I've called it "being tired". The treatment protocol I've developed I've abbreviated as the "Supine Longitudinal Encephalic Erasure Posture", or having a "sleep".

This could catch on. It is my belief that a veritable epidemic of "tiredness" is stalking unchecked though our cities and towns as we speak. It strikes the rich, the poor, the old, the young, it seems to single out those who have least time for it. It seems to be associated with this whole "running faster and faster on this little wheel thing" we've all been suckered into, but I don't have time to write about that now.

Unfortunately S.L.E.E.P is not a pharmaceutical product, so I can't copyright it, but I should be able to get a few papers published. Or go the alternative route and go on Today Tonight, do a tour of the cities, run a few workshops, write a best-selling book.

Next post, two possibilities suggest themselves.

1. Byron's Law and the medical profession - doctors I have met who are mad, bad or dangerous to know.

2. The scrotum in the corporate box.

We shall see.

One last thing - I understand that one of the thrills of writing one of these is the freedom to be as beliigerent and aggressive as you like, the ability to trumpet your own opinions without fear of dispute. Well, Robert Browning was the best poet of the nineteenth century, leagues ahead of anybody else in everything important, and I'll smack out anyone who reckons different.

Any takers?

Didn't think so.

You know, in a month or so I might get unterrified enough to allow comments here.

John