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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Sleep study minus the sleep

I had my sleep study done on Sunday night. Notice today is now Tuesday. Why didn't I blog about this on Monday? Take a wild guess. Yep, TOO sleepy. I now think the phrase "Sleep Study" is an oxy-moron. There was ZERO sleeping during my sleep study.


I arrived at 8:30pm for my appt. I went shopping earlier in the day and did some other errands so I made sure I was pretty worn out by the time I got there. Once checked in, I was shown to my room.



Then I was told to get in my nightclothes and use the facilities. It was then that I noticed all of these lovely things hanging on the back of the door.


Once I was decent, the tech came in and proceded to put aforementioned lovely things all over me. My head (in my hair). My neck. My face. Both legs. My chest. I would post a pic of that too, but I don't want to scare you all (I look AWFUL, I mean, really really bad!!). There were four sensors on my head to measure brain activity. One near my eye to detect REM sleep. One under my nose to detect whether or not I stop breathing. One of my throat to detect the vibration caused by snoring. One of my jawline to detect teeth grinding. The two on my legs to detect if I have restless leg syndrome (I guess), and then two on my chest to detect heartrate.

Afterwards the tech got me situated in bed, I tried to get comfy. That's when the fun part started. Can we say UNCOMFORTABLE?!?! Besides behind hooked up with a million wires stuck to me, I had one of those oxygen detectors on my index finger and it was starting to bother me and it hadn't even been 10 minutes in!!

I tried to watch TV and even though they had cable (which we don't at home. I KNOW, I can't believe it either), I couldn't find anything to watch. I played Bejeweled on my phone for a bit, and the newly discovered game Bookworm. I even updated my FB status. Since I didn't want them to have to tell me to go to sleep, I turned off the TV and (re)read the book I brought (Eclipse!) Once I started getting sleepy, I turned off the light and just laid there. Now, I'm not a back sleeper. I like to sleep on my sides. Everytime I tried to roll over, I would feel this tug from one of the wires, so I would roll back to where I was. I think this happened most of the night.

Roll.


Tug.

Roll.

Tug.



Did I mention there was a man snoring so loudly across the hall?!?!? OMG, I wanted to smother him with a pillow and I would have had I been able to untangle myself from the prison wires!

Wouldn't you know it, after a while nature started calling so I had to alert the tech of my need to pee. I had to turn on the nightlight and sit on the edge of the bed. Sounds easy enough, right?! Well, this nightlight had one of those slide thingamabobs to turn on and off. I couldn't get the damn thing on. Turning it off was OK, but trying to turn it back on was a PITA. So after fiddling with the darn thing for a minute, I finally got it. So as I attempt to hoist myself to the edge of the bed, I'm met with my familiar problem. Roll. Tug. Tug. Pull. etc... Ummm, HELP. I managed to get my legs on the side of the bed and my torso was halfway upright. That's as far as I could move without really unhooking something. I'm sure I was a pretty sight and I hope I gave the gals a nice little chuckle while they're watching me flop around like a fish. Finally she came in and rescued me.

Once back in bed, I think I finally fell asleep after laying there for about 45min. Then I woke up and I think I was in and out of sleep for the next 6hrs. I kept waking up. ALL NIGHT LONG.

So, in a nutshell, they needed at least 3 (or maybe it was 6) hours of sleep to reach a conclusion, and I think I may have provided them an hour. YIPPY. Then, I was left with these marks on Monday. A keepsake of the experience.


I will know the outcome in a week. I'll keep you posted!

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