The Sleep Clinic

So, the wife says I snore sometimes, and it keeps her up. She’s been pushing me for a while to see a doctor about it, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with doctors lately (see last years entries for the full story on my phantom pain), and wasn’t terribly eager. Still, I want to be a good husband, and I don’t want to be responsible for her not sleeping.

In my defense, EVERYTHING wakes her up. Baby crying upstairs, car alarm, cats, the heater hissing, crickets, whatever. She NEVER sleeps properly.

Apparently, the snoring is somewhat new. An ex-girlfriend heard about this, and said, “Since when do you snore?”

“Don’t know,” I replied, “I never stayed awake to find out.”

Anyway, I went to an ENT, who stuck a camera up my nose and down into my throat (seriously). He said, “You’ve got one heckuva deviated septum there, but I don’t see any major blockage. You might have Sleep Apnea. We’ll have to do some further testing. I want you to get a CT Scan, and then go for an overnight sleep test.”

“Uh, what?” I asked.

“You just go to a sleep clinic and they hook you up to a computer that monitors your sleep patterns,” he said.

Er…

So he writes a prescription and a couple of days later I get a call from Clinilabs to make an appointment. Of course, they called my home number, even though I made it clear my cell was the preferred mode of contact, but that’s par for the course. Doctor’s offices either think everyone has nothing better to do than be home all day; either that or they would rather just leave a message and so call the number you are least likely to answer during business hours.

In the meantime, I find out that my uncle and cousin both had surgery to correct potentially life-threatening sleep apnea, so it’s not THAT far-fetched. I figured I should go along with things. I AM tired all the time, and never feel like I am rested.

So I made the appointment, and went in on Wednesday for Polysomnography. Wisely, I took a vacation day on Thursday. I had to kill time in the city until my 9pm appointment. A nice technician escorted me into the lab, which is really just 20 or so little bedrooms and one control room with a bunch of monitors and whatnot.

They made me fill out like 50 pages of forms with tons of questions like “What is your ritual before bed?” “How much caffeine do you drink each day?” “Do you smoke?” “What time do you go to bed?” “What time do you get up?” “How many times do you wake up in an average night?” “For how long each time?” Etc.

After that, I changed into sweats to sleep in, and still had time to kill, so I sat in my mini-hotel room and read X-Men: Deadly Genesis. It was meh.

Finally, the girl comes in and says “Okay! It’s time to get you hooked up!”

Polysomnography is a profoundly unpleasant experience, as you can see from the (not me) picture. They glue 29 (I counted) electrodes to you; on your legs, into the hair atop your head, on your chest, your face, etc. You wear a finger cap thing to monitor your pulse, and they put tight straps around your chest and stomach to monitor your breathing. Tubes go in your nose to measure nasal air flow, and another contraption goes over your mouth.

Then they expect you to sleep.

At one point, when they were shoving the tubes in my nose, I started laughing.

“What?” the technician asked.

“This has officially gotten ludicrous,” I said. “How can you possibly expect me to sleep like this?”

“Everyone says that,” she said, “and everyone sleeps. You won’t be able to help it. You’ll be lying in a dark room late at night with the lights out.”

I had my doubts, but whatever. I wasn’t going to back out at that point. So around 11:30 she tucks me in, and says “the intercom will be on all night; you don’t have to hit the button. If you need anything, just speak. We’ll also be monitoring you on the video camera.”

She turned out the light and left. I laid there for a while, feeling like I was in A Clockwork Orange. The wires were all gathered together and attached to a box next to me. I had maybe 18 inches of play, whcih meant I could roll over once, but not twice. Even when I did roll over (I normally sleep on my stomach), all the wires on my FUCKING FACE made it pretty hard to get comfortable.

I did sleep, but it was a restless sleep filled with dreams of being a lab rat. I felt like I was at the Weapon X project that made Wolverine, or that I had cancer or was in a car wreck. I kept waking up feeling frantic and wanting to yank off all the wires and get the fuck out of there. One time a technician came in to adjust my straps and scared the crap out of me. Another time, I would be rolling around trying to get comfortable and a voice came on the intercom saying “Is everything all right?”

Creeped me the fuck out until I remembered they were also watching me on the video camera. I hoped I didn’t get morning wood.

Around 5am, I gave up on trying to sleep anymore, and just shifted uncomfortably for an hour. At 6, she came in, flipped on the lights, and said “Sleep study’s over! Sit in the chair and I’ll detach you.”

You know what’s no fun? Being dead-ass tired and getting pulled abruptly from bed to have someone you don’t know start pulling glue out of the hair all over your body at 6 fucking am.

After that, still 70% alseep, I had to fill out a bunch of forms on what my night’s sleep was like, how typical it was, etc.

Typical? Were they fucking kidding?

By 6:20, I was on my way home. Wednesday was nice and warm, but the temperature had dropped considerably, and I wasn’t dressed for it. Cold and tired, I made my way back to the subway.

I’ll say one thing. The F train may be a misery during the business day and at night, but at 6:30am, Brooklyn bound, it is a pleasure. Plenty of seats, and no dilly-dally at the stops, because almost no one is getting on. I was home by 7:15.

I squandered Thursday, but that is my right. I didn’t go back to sleep, because I thought it would mean I couldn’t sleep that night, so I just worked on the sequel to my book, watched Lost, looked at internet porn, etc. Good times.

No results yet from the study, so don’t ask. The people there were just technicians. A real doctor needs to check the results and then give them to my ENT. I probably won’t know shit for at least a week.

Posted on April 7, 2007 at 10:02 am by PeatB
Filed under Life, Musings
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