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I don’t quite believe it myself.
My Garmin sent me a badge for 8 hours sleep. My first ever. It happened, and I genuinely felt better for it. Not my leg, unfortunately. I went to bed with two hot water bottles and was still in terrible pain. But my head was better. I was brighter. I got up and exercised. I have been clearer and noticeably less angry as a result.
The watch was characteristically unsentimental about it. It scored me 70 out of 100 and labelled the sleep “Non-restorative”, meaning I slept long enough, but not deeply enough to bring my stress levels down overnight. A 70, by my standards, is extraordinary. The previous night scored 41.
The sleep came in two parts. I went to bed before 8pm, woke around 10pm, got up for food and watched the tennis, then went back to bed before midnight, took a pill, and slept until 4:58am. In that stretch I clocked 1 hour 50 minutes of REM and 1 hour 16 minutes of deep sleep. For context, my average night runs at around 3.5 hours total.
The only time I have beaten this in recent memory was when I was unwell abroad, heavily medicated, and slept for 9 hours.
That does not count.
This counts.
Sleep matters disproportionately with PSP. The deficit accumulates quickly, and the consequences are real. Mood drops. Thinking slows. Patience disappears. The basic ability to function starts to fray at the edges. So a night like this is not a small thing, even if the badge gives the whole thing an oddly comic quality.
I will not be able to sustain it. I know that. PSP does not suddenly become generous because of one good night. But I take genuine comfort from the fact that it happened, and I will try to repeat it without becoming too anxious if I cannot. Stressing about sleep is its own kind of trap.
Little things matter alongside the larger decline.
Last night was a little thing that felt, for once, really quite satisfying.
