"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! 2025 #9

Last year, every Saturday I featured  a post called "Wisdom for 2024" 

This year, every Saturday, I will post a series of unusual personal experiences 

from the past under the title "You Can't Make This Stuff Up."

Sometimes, names or locations will be changed or disguised to protect the guilty! 

Besides, I am retired! What can they do, fire me?

 

MY SLEEP DRIVING EPISODE

This is a warning against taking the sleep medication AMBIEN. For years, especially when I was traveling long distances and especially when I was making trips down to the islands, I had a prescription for AMBIEN to help me sleep on airplanes and in noisy island cities. I would break them in half just to help me doze off. 

One night, when I couldn't fall asleep at home no matter how much I tried, I took half of an AMBIEN. I had a doctor's appointment the next day to get something for the flu I felt was coming on. That was very much on my mind when I went to sleep around 8:00 pm. Well, I woke up at 2:00 am thinking it was 2:00 pm and I was late for my doctor's appointment. 

I got up, got dressed and skipped my morning shower. I left my phone at home and got in my car and left the garage door open as I drove off! I could not see the road, only the edge near the passenger's side.

I did not go my usual way on Lexington Road, but turned onto Newburg Road past Bellarmine and headed up the hill toward the Expressway. As I was going up the hill, I hit a median and a sign with both front tires. It flattened both tires and leveled the sign.  Since it was 2:00 am in the morning, a few cars were out and started honking at me! I got the car back on the road and turned onto the Expressway. I remember driving very slowly on the Expressway with both front tires flat. I have no memory after that until I was parked in front of the doctor's office. It was then I realized that I had driven from my condo to his office unaware that I was actually "sleep driving" - one of the known side-effects of AMBIEN that I learned about after the fact!

I remember slowly coming to consciousness as the car got colder and colder in the winter temperature after I turned off the key. Slowly I realized that I had no phone to make a call, my front tires were flat so I could not drive anywhere and the doctor's office would not be open for several hours.  I had enough gas to turn the car heater on and off every couple of half-hours to keep from freezing. 

By 9:00 am when the office opened, I was wide awake. Embarrassed, I went in, looking quite disheveled, as if nothing had happened. I asked the receptionist if she would call my friends at Coat's Cars and Trucks to bring their wrecker because of the two flats and a damaged bumper and if she would call a taxi to take me home! 

I had to go back to the doctor's office a week later. I asked the receptionist if I looked "strange" the day last time I was in there! She said, "No, I didn't notice anything different!"  (That really hurt my feelings! I had been un-showered, disheveled and unkempt!)

After reading about AMBIEN, I no longer would dare take it. People have been arrested for drunk driving, cooking a meal in the middle of the night and even having sex with strangers unknowingly!  I wish it had been a multiple choice question. I would have chosen differently! I like to cook!