Jet Lag

If you have ever had Jet Lag it is a little strange to deal with. Even when I was in South Korea it would hit me at strange times during the day. Now that I'm back I went to bed within 3 hours after I arrived back in San Francisco after being awake from morning in South Korea until about 4 pm San Francisco time. So, I was mostly awake for about 24 to 30 hours straight before I slept next. Then I slept for 3 or 4 hours and got up for about 3 hours and then slept a few hours and then got up and then about midnight I went to bed and slept about 14 hours straight and woke up at 2 pm the next day. This 14 hours of sleep definitely helped. My wife hasn't been as lucky in catching up on sleep enough to feel normal yet. But, I'm not really normal either. I had to change my heart medicine schedule because I really should take it every  12 hours to be safe. Then I was going to take another dose 8 hours later and realized this wouldn't be safe. Then I wound up taking a dose 9 1/2 hours after the previous one and it still made my heart hurt because the doses were too close together. But, tomorrow I can get back on my regular schedule here in the San francisco area because I did this.

For a long time I worried about going through the jet lag at 67 after having an operation for a Burst appendix in April. I worried that this journey might kill me or something. But, instead it invigorated me in a new way so it was really worth going after all.

So, the next hurdle is to recover from the jet lag so I get back to normal. The last time it took me 30 days to get normal in my sleep cycle once again last year.

So, when people talk about jet lag, they are serious about how this can be a problem. And as you age this problem often becomes more acute. But, since I'm mostly retired I have the time to readjust so this is good too.

Traveling causes you to adapt a lot which is good to get you out of your ruts of actions and thinking. In this sense even though traveling can be stressful in many ways it also can keep you alive too because it forces you to keep adapting.

For my wife it was the best vacation she's had in years and my friend and his wife have a new baby that is 15 months old so she was in heaven since our youngest is now 19 and in college.