My fabulous sleep study experience!
Last night, I had a polysomnogram, the fancy name for a general sleep study. This test records several body functions while I slept, including brain activity, eye movement, oxygen and carbon dioxide blood levels, heart rate and rhythm, breathing rate and rhythm, the flow of air through my mouth and nose, snoring, body muscle movements, and chest and belly movements. To start, they asked me to change into my sleeping clothes. I then sat in a chair while the technician hooked me up to 22 or so leads from my head, face, chest and legs. Like that wasn’t enough, they put not one but two, oxygen like tubes in my nose. I don’t know who this is, but this is what it looks like:
I wasn’t allowed to take my medication to sleep, so I was very anxious about not being able to sleep. On top of that, there is a microphone listening to everything and a video camera watching every move I made. More anxiety!! The lights went out at 11 pm and there I lay focusing on every breath and movement my body was making. I tried every falling asleep technique I could think of (going through the alphabet naming fruits and veggies…what one starts with Q? too frustrating so I did it again thinking of colors…what one starts with Q? gave that up too!) after what seemed like forever, I think I dozed off because I awoke with a huge sleep jerk! Of course it took a while to doze back off, but the crap taped to my face was tingling and really irritating me. I laid there and stared at the video camera wondering what they were thinking or saying on the other side of it. I tossed and turned get tangled in my web of cords and just gave up on ever falling asleep. When the technician came in at 6 am to wake me up, I was already awake wishing I could just go home!
Not so fast, Turbo!! After the technician removed the stuff from my body, I had these huge globs of hard wax like stuff in my hair. I spent 20 minutes in the shower pulling gobs of it from my hair, not sure how much of my hair came out with it! I got in my car to drive home, and I was so tired I wasn’t sure I was going to safely make it. I stopped at the first coffee stand, stuck my arm out the window and asked if she could just inject straight shots into my veins. No luck, so I took a tall iced latte. I made it home safely and can’t wait until bed time so I can get a good nights rest!
My follow-up appointment isn’t until July 31st. I just hope I don’t have to go back in because they didn’t get enough data due to my inability to sleep! That would be awful!!!
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