The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep

At a recent medical exam my doctor was concerned about my daytime sleepiness.  I told him I was always sleepy.  He gave me a questionnaire to rate how sleepy I was on a scale of 1 to 3 with 3 being “very likely to”.  There were a dozen or so questions like “how likely are you to fall asleep while riding as a passenger in a car.  Or fall asleep in a work meeting, or while watching TV. Etc.  I did not finish the quiz because I think I nodded off.

He looked at my results and suggested I take a sleep study to find out if I had some abnormal sleep behavior.  A sleep disorder study is where you go to a medical facility at night and let a perfect stranger see you in your jammies as she sticks sensors and wires all over your scalp and body parts.  Then you are supposed to sleep without disconnecting any of the wires or strangling yourself.  And during the entire ordeal you are being watched and videotaped.  I don’t even like the idea of being watched at the drive thru bank, so having a stranger watch me try to sleep was a bit disconcerting.  The sleep study itself seemed like abnormal behavior. 

The night of my sleep study was wet and rainy.  The parking lot was empty and I grabbed my overnight bag off of the back seat.  I went in to the lobby of the building and it was completely vacant.  There was a sign that told me to go down the hall and take a left.  The glass doors closed automatically behind me, and I felt like I was in jail.  Gee, do I get conjugal visits?  Was I supposed to bring my own conjugator?  Is that even a word? 

I checked in.  The attendant was a friendly lady who put me at ease.  She gave me several forms to fill out.  I had to sign permission for them to call my next of kin in case of a major medical malfunction.  I noticed on the form that parts of it were already filled out in my wife’s handwriting.  The box was checked where it said “do not resuscitate”.  Hmmmm.   

The attendant had me change into my night clothes after we did the paperwork.  She used a measuring tape and a pencil to mark specific areas on my scalp to put each sensor.  My hair is rather thick, so she really had to dig in to my scalp to mark the spots for the electrodes.  It felt like she was carving a pumpkin up there.   The attendant said these sensors were to pick up brain activity.  I told her according to my wife; there is was no brain activity.  The attendant was not amused.  I also mentioned that the spots she was carving in to my scalp were becoming a bit tender.  She suggested that when I got home to have my wife massage my head.  I told her she did that regularly, usually with a rolled up newspaper.  The attendant was not amused.

The attendant started to wire me up.  She strapped two elastic bands around my chest that held on what looked like a transistor radio.  I really was not in the mood for music.  Maybe it was the remote control for the TV?  That actually seemed like a clever idea.  I am always losing the remote, so having it strapped to my chest would have benefits.  She ran electrical wire down each leg and connected them to my feet with tape.  She hooked up two more on my arms.  Then she globbed some sticky stuff on those pencil marks on my scalp and attached electrodes there too.  This reminded me of a moment in the movie “Back to the Future” where Doc had a vegetable colander on his head that was connected to a tangle of wires.  The wires were connected to a toaster and when he sneezed the toast popped up.  Maybe I am not remembering that part right.  Anyway, the attendant gathered up all the wires dangling from my body and scalp and plugged them in to that box on my chest.

I was finally wired up and ready for the study to begin.  It was still early so I watched a little TV before going to sleep.  The TV remote was apparently not working because no matter which button I pushed on my chest, I could not change stations.  I drifted off around 10pm.  I prefer to sleep on my side, so I knew that this box on my chest was not going to stay put for long.  And sure enough, several times during the night the attendant came in and had to re-plug in some of the wires that I managed to loosen.  At 3a.m. I woke up and could not get back to sleep.  But being a tight wad, I wanted to get my money’s worth, so I laid there until five.  

I was happy that the test was over and I could get unhooked.  I hope the Dr. will get some useful information from watching the video of me asleep.  I hope I didn’t do anything weird like sleep walk, or pee in the corner, or put the TV in to my overnight bag.  However, I did not feel rested at all, so I would not recommend this activity for anyone who has difficulty sleeping.  When I got home I told my wife all about the study.  I mentioned the suggested scalp massage.  She immediately looked around for the Sunday paper.   Hmmm, maybe I should go back and do another study.