I Can't Get No Sleep

PEOPLE ARE pretty gross when they're sick. They get sad and lethargic, and sometimes they vomit on your stuff. This is annoying, so Harvard created the University Health Services in order to take these bothersome people off our hands.

And yet, noble as the experiment might have seemed on paper, in practice UHS wallows ineffectively in the quagmire of its own bureaucracy. Most people at UHS are empowered to act only within the confines of extremely rigid rules and regulations. These rules are not designed to bend in the harsh wind of reality.

Of the many rules at UHS, the most important during my stay there seemed to be the "do not allow Eric Pulier to ever fall asleep" rule. Yet even before I arrived at the "no sleep" part of my stay, I experienced the "no doctor" part. I arrived at UHS with a torn ligament in my right knee. Perhaps the nurses on duty mistook the convoluted look on my face for a warped smile, for they did not find it necessary to summon for me a doctor.

Yet at the time, I did not consider this possibility and was quite disturbed to find myself festering on a stretcher without medical attention for eight hours while experiencing a strange tingling sensation best described as "intense pain".

Once I finally made contact with a doctor and was wheeled to the hospital upstairs, all I could think about was sleep. But, as I said, sleep was not in the rules.

AS SOON as I was settled, the nurse informed me that she had to remove some of that weird red liquid that once did something vital in my body. She also said she had to measure the pressure of the liquid that was still doing something vital in my body. Fine, I thought--common procedure for incoming patients.

But then this nurse and others like her came back again and again and again. Every few hours they returned to maul my sleepless frame. They were just following the rules, of course. I could imagine them pointing to a rule book and saying, "Look, it's right here in black and white: keep Eric awake by doing unnecessary tests whenever he is about to fall asleep."

Continually they would awaken me to do these tests, and continually it was determined that I should reduce my salt intake if I wished to avoid heart trouble in about 30 years. My arm must have forecast the arrival of these tests, because it soon began to contract itself in anticipation.

The next barrier to my rest was the methodically beeping noise that emanated from an machine which, as far as anyone there knew, served no purpose other than to keep me awake. I asked them to turn it off, and was stunned to find that there was no rule against this. I guess they were confident that they had enough other rules which would keep me awake without having to worry about the extra assurance of a beep machine.

Indeed a beep machine seemed superfluous considering someone had already installed a phone by the empty bed beside me which kept on ringing with calls for someone named "Herman." The telephone lay just out of my reach, waiting silently for the precise moment of my dream when the girl comes in. Then it would ring, I would jump, and some nimrod on the other end would ask for "Herman" or hang up at the sound of my enraged greeting. I thought maybe the nurses were calling the number and then laughing hysterically when I answered. I asked for the extra phone to be disconnected, but it wasn't in the rules.

The beep machine was soon neutralized, the telephone was buried under a pillow and--by my best calculations--my next blood pressure reading was at least half an hour away. I was ecstatic--20 minutes of glorious sleep seemed to lay ahead. But it was not to be, for Marian was missing.

MARIAN, I soon discovered, was a nurse whose whereabouts were continually in question. For some reason, it was often suspected that she was in my room when I was on the verge of sleep.

"MARIAN? MARIAN? IS MARIAN THERE?" the loudspeaker by my bed periodically bellowed.

"No, she's not in here."

"WHAT? MARIAN? ARE YOU THERE?" it answered.

Eventually it got to be too much. When the speaker for the fifth time rang out "MARIAN? MARIAN? MARIAN? ARE YOU THERE? IS MARIAN THERE?" I screamed: "YES, damn it, its true! She's been lying here all along! Marian is here! HA HA HA HA! I kidnapped Marian! Try and get her! HA HA HA HA!"

I was tired.

This prevented future searches for Marian in my room, although it did little to halt the telephone and blood pressure fiascos. I didn't need the blood pressure tests so often (my doctor later agreed), I didn't need a telephone for "Herman" (the doc also concurred on this one), and I certainly didn't know who Marian was (neither did he).

Although friendly and attentive within the confines of the rules, everyone there seemed powerless to offer me the one thing I truly wanted--sleep. Now I don't want to suggest that the UHS hospital should be a madhouse where men and beasts roam side by side drinking and carousing long into the wee hours. But I am asking for a place where more people are trained and empowered to deal with individual situations rather than being forced to always follow generic guidelines.

UHS is a place created to heal ailing students and to confront illnesses in students who don’t feel like taking exams. They fulfill the latter function well, but they are far off from fulfilling the other--unless sleeplessness is some kind of revolutionary new cure-all.