The sleep aid that woke me up

       There are certainly some advantages to being in what I call "the power demographic." Although it initially hurt my sensibilities, it is nice that the "oldies stations" play MY music. At this point in life, I can live from every other paycheck to every other paycheck. My child is old enough to be at home alone. Yes, these are advantages.
       One drawback, however, is the change in my sleep pattern. I usually only achieve five or six hours of sleep. If that's all I needed, I would have no concern. If that's all I needed, I wouldn't have this story to tell.

       A couple months ago, I had joined one of those wholesale store clubs. For the hey-why-not of it, I looked at a bottle of melatonin. The label said it had 365 tablets in it. "Cute," I thought, "One for each night of the year." The ingredients said it also contained B6, valerian and chamomile. It seemed safe enough. I bought it.
       On this particular night, it was getting late but my mind was still humming with the day. Over the previous weeks, I had taken maybe 10 doses of the melatonin. I have no conclusive proof whether it works or not. Regardless, that night I wanted what help it could give me.
       Being a nurse, I have a particular revulsion about using my hands to touch a med until I pop it in my mouth. In nursing school, we practiced pouring M&Ms from one medicine cup into another. When we could do that successfully, we then practiced pouring meds into the cap and putting only one pill from the cap into the med cup. It is standard aseptic technique. If you watch any nurse pouring meds, you'll see him/her work hard to not touch a pill with his/her fingers. If a pill falls onto the cart, you'll see the nurse use a plastic spoon or another aseptic method to pick it up. This is also a safety measure for the nurse. There are some drugs we "handle" that we don't want to touch with our bare skin, such as chemotherapy or nitroglycerine. 
       This tired but awake nurse opened the container of melatonin. She gently shook the bottle over its cap. Four or five of the tiny tablets fell into the cap. She gently shook the cap over the bottle. All of the tablets fell back into the bottle. Stuck inside this time loop, she repeated it. 
       She repeated it.
       She --
       She managed to spill almost 365 melatonin pills.
       She moaned, "Awwww, maaaannnn!" 
       Her husband called from another room, "Are you okay?"
       "I just spilled melatonin all over."
       "Can I help you pick them up?"
       "No, it's okay. I'll just throw them out."
       But how? It was approaching 11 pm. The neighbors in the next apartment would excuse 10 seconds of a vacuum cleaner. It's not like I vacuum a lot.
       I plugged in the vacuum cleaner. I turned it on. I ran it over the pills. The vacuum cleaner made an awful, rattling, bone-jarring, make-your-teeth-hurt noise. The next thing I know, a semi-automatic melatonin gun is shooting melatonin at me.
       Just like the time I unwittingly stirred up a yellow jacket nest, I stood there in a daze while the melatonin assaulted me. Ping! Ping! Brrrrrrt! Ping! Ping! Ping!
       By what seemed like heavenly intervention, I managed to turn off the vacuum.
       Defeated, I surrendered. I took a broom and a dustpan and swept up what I could.
       For the next few days, I was still finding melatonin in the bathroom, behind doors, under the vanity.

       I have a suggestion for the melatonin makers. Along with the admonition to not operate heavy machinery, they should print a warning:
       This medication may cause you to laugh yourself to sleep.