I know not all of my readers know me on a personal level. For those of you who don’t, I’ve been waiting to have a sleep study done to determine why I am so tired all of the time – why I’m nodding off and practically passing out just a couple of hours after having a full night’s sleep. Last night, I had that study.

I was really nervous about it. I’ve only ever slept in a hospital when giving birth and that’s scary enough to me in itself. But I knew I’d be hooked up to wires and machines as I tried to sleep and that only made me more nervous. I’m the kind of person who sees a stethoscope and forgets how to breathe because I become so self conscious.

Last night I arrived at the hospital and attempted to follow the instructions that came with my packet. It said to go through the main entrance to the information desk and tell the receptionist that I was there for a sleep study. Except… I got there and there was no one at the desk. Okay, so we decide to try another desk and we make our way to the emergency room but the doors were ‘closed at 7:30′ with no indication of where else to go. The papers said that the Sleep Study was on the 4th floor, so we decided to try there. We entered the elevator behind this woman in scrubs and followed her to the 4th floor where we found out that no only was she staff for the sleep study, she would be the one watching me sleep.

She takes my name and then come to find out, I needed to go back downstairs because I’ve never been to this hospital before and supposedly they were unable to contact me for pre-registration over the phone (never mind that they called me two other times, so I don’t see why they were unable to get hold of me). I go back downstairs and am directed to a woman who I hope gets a personality for Christmas. I sit down with her and tell her my birthday, address and phone number at least 5 times. She gives me the fancy hospital jewelry and sends me back upstairs.

The sleep study room was a bit surprising. It was a full sized bed – complete with headboard. Too bad it was incredibly stiff and uncomfortable. I sat down and filled out more paperwork – basically some pre-sleep questions about how I was feeling prior to the test. I watched a horrible movie about the sleep study that was supposedly made in 1996, but looked like it was made in the 80s.

Then the wires and other various hook ups came…

Electrodes…
One behind each ear
One of my forehead
One next to each eye
One on each ankle
Two on my chin
One on my throat (microphone)
Three pasted onto my scalp

And then I also had tubes up my nose that would record my breathing and straps around my stomach and chest. I also had one of those pulse takers on my left index finger – the kind they tape on and it makes your finger look like it’s lit up. At least that part was amusing as I kept saying ‘E.T. Phone Home’ and laughing. But needless to say… I was covered in wires and tubes and it was pretty uncomfortable.

The nurse turned out the lights and left the room to go across the hallway where she’d talk to me over an intercom and ask me to do various things to test the connectors – blink my eyes, look up/down/left/right, hold my breath, cough, wiggle each leg, etc. All was good, so I was told I could go to sleep whenever I was ready.

I was really surprised that there was a television. When my ex had a sleep study, television before sleep was a big no-no. I was exhausted anyways as it was 9:30 by the time I finally got to relax and television was out of the question – I just wanted to sleep. Too bad I slept very poorly.

I feel like it took me forever to fall asleep and I know I woke up at least 4 times just out of being in pain from the stiff bed. I was very self conscious and overall, I don’t think I slept well. At about 5am, I woke up and had to use the bathroom – which is pretty normal for me. I started getting out of the bed so I could fumble about and call for the nurse, but it’s sort of creepy…. she was watching me via video camera, saw me getting up and came to help me. I went to the bathroom and then got back in bed. I was immediately back out and had a dream about killing zombies with Febreeze.

Yeah… you read that right.

And then before I knew it, it was all over. I filled out the after sleep questionnaire and went home. I’m kind of tired and I’m sure in a couple of hours, I’ll be passed out in my own bed.

I’ll get the results of the sleep study in about two weeks.

This isn’t me obviously… I have girl parts. But this video was posted to me this morning and it’s a pretty accurate representation of what I went through.