I had my sleep study last night. I think it was a waste of time. Maybe I don't have a sleep disorder. Maybe I'm just crazy. Or lazy. Or crazy and lazy at the same time. What a combo.

I got to the sleep lab right on time at 8:30 at night. Which was sort of a miracle, since I had to work until 6:00 and it rained. That meant I didn't get home until 7:30, and I still had to get a shower and I had to put gasoline in the car in order to get to the hospital on time. It's very difficult to explain to a parrot and a mastiff that you aren't going to be home because you have to go to a sleep lab. Still, I tried....

See what I mean about the crazy part?

Anyway, I got over there and got registered, along with 4 other people, 3 men and a woman. They all looked like snorers. Not that they were overweight. Only the other woman was...and who am I to talk about anybody else being overweight? The men just looked sort of...thick and snorey. But I didn't hear anybody snore all night. I was surprised, because usually you can hear everything that goes on in a hospital. I guess they had have heavy doors. And it was a much more spacious place than I expected - all new. I suppose there's money in sleep apnea.

The room I was in was larger than my bedroom at home and there was a chair I could have slept in. Well, nowadays, I could fall asleep anywhere. Still, I wasn't tired at 9:30. The other woman said that she was exhausted, so she got "hooked up" first. I peeked out the door. It didn't look too dangerous. Then she went to bed, and I took my turn.

Everything was okay until they got to my nose. I had electodes all over the place, my head, to measure my brain waves (if I had any), my legs to see if they twitched....And they didn't. Not once. Do you believe it? Even my back didn't hurt. Maybe it was that the place had a better matress. Or maybe I was just more calm, because there was nothing to do before bed. I mean there was nothing I could have physically done. I hadn't brought any useful reading, so I just sat there reading a magazine.

But, I was trying to explain about my nose. They stick these little wires in your nostrils to detect if you quit breathing: that's what sleep apnea is all about, at least the obstructive kind. That's the kind most people have. My nose was too small for the regular adult size nose wires, so they had to get some they use for kids.

If you think it might be hard to sleep with wires sticking up your nose, you're right. It was a little weird. But the room was dark. After I got through paging through People while trying to ignore the wires sticking out of my nose there was not much to do. So I turned the light out and looked at the infrared light that illuminated for the camera.

Yeah, I was being videotaped. I signed a release for it. It said that it was only going to be for diagnostic purposes. I wrote in the margin "If I wind up on YouTube I am going to be seriously pissed off". Maybe that's my problem: serious lack of respect for legal documents. Or an illegal lack of seriousness.

I lay there and said my prayers. Then I wondered why my legs weren't twitching. Then my hands started twitching again - no sensors there. Oh well. Then I worried about what would happen if I started sleep walking and got all tangled up in my wires. Then I flopped around some and tried to warm up my feet, and said some more prayers. I readjusted the wires in my nose. It seemed like all this was taking hours, but I'm sure it wasn't.

Then the next thing I knew I was having a dream about work and then my eyes snapped open. I figured it was about 3:30 in the morning, one of the times I usually wake up. So I plumped up up the pillows and got ready to do the prayer/worrying/flopping routine again when the door opened and the sleep tech came in and asked if I was awake.

She knew I was. That was the point of the whole hook up, to say nothing about the nose wires.
"I have enough time on your study, you can go home now if you want."

"What time is it?"

"4:30."

"How much time do you need?"

"Six hours. You know, you did sleep" she said, because, I'd told her I was afraid I wouldn't.

"For six hours?" I didn't feel like I'd been sleeping for six hours.

"Well, six hours of recording. I can't say anything about your study, the neurologist has to read it."

Naturally. "Can you tell me if this was a waste of time?"

"I don't think so" she said. But what was she supposed to say?

Then I went home and slept for 4 more hours.

sigh