Ever since the day I was born, I have been nocturnal. My mom used to tell me stories about how
when I was a toddler, I would sleep all day and stay awake all night, so the
pediatrician told her to “entertain” me all day and keep me awake, that way, I
would get tired and sleep through the night. My poor mother did everything but hire clowns to entertain me, but the end result was she would collapse
from exhaustion at 9 p.m., and I’d still be wide awake and raring to go.
Through the years, my “backward time-clock.” as the doctors
called it, gave me a lot of problems. For one thing, I lived so close to my
high school, I could see into the classrooms from my bedroom window, yet I was
late nearly every morning because I couldn’t wake up. That was because I never
managed to fall asleep until about 4 a.m.
The same problem occurred when I tried to work a 9-5 job. To
me, 9:00 in the morning was the equivalent of trying to make a “normal” person
get up for work at 2:00 a.m., so I ended up finding jobs where I could work the
graveyard shift. It was the perfect shift for me – but the options were
limited. I mean, I wasn’t about to find a job as a dental receptionist that
started at midnight.
When I wasn’t working, I always stayed up all night.
Usually, I would go to bed just in time to wake up my husband for work.
This might explain why we never had any kids.
Thankfully, the dawn of the home-computer age was my
salvation. I now can stay at home and work in my pajamas at 2 a.m., if I want,
and not have to worry about punching a time card or trying to conform to what
others deem as normal hours.
“You were born on Halloween, right?” one of my friends said
to me one day when I told her I’d gone to bed at 10 in the morning and slept
until 5:00 in the afternoon.
“Yeah, I was born on Halloween, why?”
“Have you ever thought you might be…part vampire?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I like my steaks and burgers cooked
well-done.”
“Well,” she said, “You might want to stay out of the
sunlight, just in case. You could end up turning into a pile of ashes, just
like the vampires do when they’re exposed to sunlight.”
I remember laughing at her warning, but last weekend
something happened to make me seriously begin to consider the possibility that
one of my long-lost relatives just might be Count Dracula.
I had gone out for my daily morning walk with my dogs, which
I usually do around 8 a.m., before I go to bed. I walk the same two-mile route every day, and it takes just under
30 minutes.
Well, on this particular day, it was really hot and humid,
even at such an early hour, so I was eager to get the walk over with. But I
happened to meet one of my neighbors, also out walking, so we stopped and
talked for about 20 minutes. By the time I got home, I was hot and sweaty, and
ready for a cold shower and a good day’s sleep.
I took my shower, and when I got out, I started to feel
pains in my arms – as if they were being poked with lit cigarettes. I examined my arms and was shocked to see
they were covered with big red welts. I also noticed some welts popping out at
the base of my neck. Within minutes, I was intensely itching, and the splotches
were getting bigger and redder.
Thinking I had a rare case of something like jungle fever, I
headed straight to a walk-in clinic (well, I did put on my clothes
first).
There, a doctor with a very serious expression examined me
and said, “Hmmm,” a lot.
Finally, he asked, “Do you get much sun?”
“No, I’m nocturnal. I’m usually outside only early in the
mornings.”
“Just as I figured,” he said. “You have PMLE.”
My mind raced as I tried to think what PMLE might stand for.
I decided it probably was a shortened version of the word “pimple.” I frowned, thinking heck, I could have
diagnosed that myself.
“You’re saying I have pimples?” I asked him.
He shook his head and smiled. “No, PMLE stands for
polymorphous light eruption.”
I just stared blankly at him.
“You’ve become allergic to the sun,” he said. “Have you
noticed the pattern of your urticaria?”
“My what?” I dumbly asked, silently wishing this guy would
speak English.
“Your hives,” he said. “I can tell you exactly what you were
wearing when you went outside – a short-sleeved shirt with a V-neck.”
He was right.
“Your hives are only where your skin was exposed to the
sunlight,” he explained. “You don’t have them anywhere else.”
“So you’re telling me that every time I go out in the sun
now for longer than 20 minutes, I’m going to break out in hives?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said, “until you desensitize your skin
to sunlight, over time.”
I immediately thought about this sience-fiction movie I had
seen about “mole people” when I was a kid. They had lived underground in the
dark for years, until their skin was so pale and pasty looking, they resembled
ghosts. They then decided to go above ground to see what it was like in the
outside world – and they immediately were fried to death by the sun.
“You should wear sunscreen – the higher the SPF the better,”
the doctor said. “And at first, you should cover every inch of your body in
clothing when you go out.”
I pictured myself having to dress like a nun – or a
beekeeper - just to go to the beach. I figure I’d probably die of heatstroke
before I had the chance to break out in hives.
“If you go out in the sun and expose your skin for short
amounts of time each day,” he continued, “you probably will be much less
sensitive within a couple months.”
“But by then, it will be fall!” I said.
“Unfortunately, that’s one of the downsides of living in a
state that has four seasons,” he said. “And next summer, you’ll have to start
from scratch again.”
I thought the hives would disappear immediately, but they
turned into a rash that hung around for the next five days. I realized, with a
deep sense of relief, that the only reason why my face hadn’t broken out was because
I’d been wearing a hat – and foundation makeup. So at least I was spared from
having to wear a bag over my head for a week.
So now I have no choice other than to be nocturnal – that
is, until the colder weather arrives, when wearing long sleeves and pants won’t
cause me to self-combust.
In the meantime, I’m going to research my ancestry and see
if there just might be a couple vampires hanging by their feet somewhere on my
family tree.
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