9/10 I got my new sleep med, which my neurologist prescribed to me and convinced my insurance to cover. It’s a non-generic one, fairly new and hence patent-protected, and hence so expensive that the insurance would rather have me take something cheaper. And so, as I learned, what they commonly do is they up the copay for that drug, to make it less attractive for me to get it, to which the manufacturer responds by giving out coupons to reduce that copay.

It works not by making you sleep, but by making you not wake up. That’s very much how the first night felt. I had to pee in the middle of that night, and I very much stumbled into the bathroom without fully waking up. I must have lain on my injured shoulder in some unfortunate position for hours, and realized the pain at some point – I won’t call it waking up, because I didn’t – and must have spent a long time trying to find a position where it would not continue hurting. I figured I’d take some Tylenol, but it seemed impossibly complex to get it, and it took me a long long time to realize that a bottle of it was lying right next to my head.

In the morning I felt, maybe not exceptionally rested, but way better than in any of the last few days.