Sleep Studies and getting no sleep
Jul. 30th, 2003 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jbsegalSo, last night after Tech Squares I rushed home, showered and headed over to Mt Auburn Hospital's Sleep Lab to have a sleep study.
Overall, over the past...many...years, my standard answer to "How are you doing" has been "Tired". Sometime over the past 6 months or so, knowing a fair number of people who have the whole "I love my CPAP" thing going, and being tired of being tired, I made the appropriate set of appointments - PCP to Neurologist, Neurologist to Sleep Lab - to see if there was any sort of physical cause behind it, or to find out if I just need to go to sleep earlier and sleep later.
So I get to the sleep lab - after determining that I couldn't enter via either of the 2 main entrances and walking around to the emergency entrance, and going through the fastest hospital checkin of my life - where Josef(?) (Probably - he's very russian...) proceded to wire me up like a cyborg:
2 electrodes over each eyebrow, 2 on my chin, 4 around the crown of my head, 1 behind each ear, 1 on each (front shoulder bone), 2 on the side of each calf, a mic on my throat, an elastic strap (either more exectrode, or measuring expansion) around my chest and one around my abdomen, a nasal and mouth breathe sensor on a nose/ear strap (the nasal part of it going IN to my nose) and a pulse-ox monitor on my right index finger.
Then I was put in a hospital bed in a small room and left to fall asleep - with a red light on to provide enough light for them to video-tape the whole night.
YOU try sleeping through this.
I tell you, it isn't easy. I'm convinced that I got something like 2-3 hours of sleep. I started the evening reading - as I almost always do - and put the book down and the bedside light out when the yawning got too much. That's when I discovered that the red light was nearly bright enough to read by on its own.
And sleeping on my back's never been my forte.
And hospital beds aren't known for their comfort.
I'd asked to be woken up at 10am. At 9:05, Igor (the head tech of the sleep lab, also very russian) came in and said "you're not sleeping. Do you want to get up?" and I replied "Why not?"
He gave me a minute or 2 to acheive more conciousness and then proceded to unglue lots of electrodes from my body. Fun fun.
Then I went home and washed the rest of the glue out of my hair and tried to sleep for a couple more hours, til I had an appointment.
Since then, I've been in a daze.
Igor said he'd call me for a 2nd study (on a CPAP) iif he saw evidence of Apnaea, elsewise I'll hear back from the neurologist 'soon'.
Fun fun. Or something.
Overall, over the past...many...years, my standard answer to "How are you doing" has been "Tired". Sometime over the past 6 months or so, knowing a fair number of people who have the whole "I love my CPAP" thing going, and being tired of being tired, I made the appropriate set of appointments - PCP to Neurologist, Neurologist to Sleep Lab - to see if there was any sort of physical cause behind it, or to find out if I just need to go to sleep earlier and sleep later.
So I get to the sleep lab - after determining that I couldn't enter via either of the 2 main entrances and walking around to the emergency entrance, and going through the fastest hospital checkin of my life - where Josef(?) (Probably - he's very russian...) proceded to wire me up like a cyborg:
2 electrodes over each eyebrow, 2 on my chin, 4 around the crown of my head, 1 behind each ear, 1 on each (front shoulder bone), 2 on the side of each calf, a mic on my throat, an elastic strap (either more exectrode, or measuring expansion) around my chest and one around my abdomen, a nasal and mouth breathe sensor on a nose/ear strap (the nasal part of it going IN to my nose) and a pulse-ox monitor on my right index finger.
Then I was put in a hospital bed in a small room and left to fall asleep - with a red light on to provide enough light for them to video-tape the whole night.
YOU try sleeping through this.
I tell you, it isn't easy. I'm convinced that I got something like 2-3 hours of sleep. I started the evening reading - as I almost always do - and put the book down and the bedside light out when the yawning got too much. That's when I discovered that the red light was nearly bright enough to read by on its own.
And sleeping on my back's never been my forte.
And hospital beds aren't known for their comfort.
I'd asked to be woken up at 10am. At 9:05, Igor (the head tech of the sleep lab, also very russian) came in and said "you're not sleeping. Do you want to get up?" and I replied "Why not?"
He gave me a minute or 2 to acheive more conciousness and then proceded to unglue lots of electrodes from my body. Fun fun.
Then I went home and washed the rest of the glue out of my hair and tried to sleep for a couple more hours, til I had an appointment.
Since then, I've been in a daze.
Igor said he'd call me for a 2nd study (on a CPAP) iif he saw evidence of Apnaea, elsewise I'll hear back from the neurologist 'soon'.
Fun fun. Or something.
