Prolonged sleeplessness? I've not noticed any effects.
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Here's one that shows what prolonged sleeplessness does to your mind. Kenny has not routinely slept through the night since he was about 5-6 months old. He's now 17 months old.
I woke suddenly last night, and could hear Kenny quietly walking in the hallway. So I got up to see what he was doing. It wasn't that he was crying, but he really shouldn't be toddling about the apartment by himself in the middle of the night.
Mari wasn't in bed, so she was either sleeping in his room or perhaps out in the living room doing chores (our sleep times overlap but are no longer the same). In any event, I followed the noise of his tiny footfalls into the living room ... but wait what's he doing sleeping on the floor of his room!
Coming into the living room, I incoherently asked Mari, "Are there two children here?"
She looked at me like I'd gone mad, and wanted to know what I was talking about. I told her that I'd been woken by the sound of Kenny walking in the hallway. Very clearly, it was Kenny. Pit-pat-pit-pat, too quick and too light to be anyone else.
Mari shivered, and hurried in to see Kenny. Nope, he was where she'd left him. I muttered something about a ghost child, and she shivered again.
In the morning, when she reminded me of all of this (which I'd completely forgotten) she decided that I must have heard her walking out of the room after she'd been in and out for some purpose. But I know the difference between her footsteps and Kenny's. I suspect that he got up, stepped into the hall, decided that everything was right, and went back to bed. I'd heard him do pretty much that same thing while trying to get him to go to sleep on his own on Monday night while I was taking care of him solo.
Well I think that's what it was. Who knows. It's now been 14 months at about 1/2 the normal number of hours of sleep per night.