I Flunked My Sleep Test
I flunked my sleep test.
The ONE THING I study on a more-than-regular basis, you'd think I'd score better. But no.
The test started Monday night. Sunday night, I didn’t go to bed until 6:30-ish am, in part because I'm an idiot; in part because I was sad and looking for things to cheer me up; AND in part because I slept all of Friday & Saturday. Despite working all day Sunday, I wasn't that tired Sunday night. Anyway, fell asleep around 7am Monday and then couldn't wake up when the alarms all went off. The beeping one kept going, starting at 2:30pm until I finally dragged my ass out of bed at 5:30pm to get ready to go to the study. So it wasn't GOOD sleep. But it was sleep nonetheless.
I took a shower so that the sticky sensor things would stick to me. I packed up a lot of things to do and eat, because after the sleep study at night, I was going to spend the day sitting around for hours at a time, then taking 20 minute naps. Given the wiring, I wasn’t going anywhere to find food. I brought many things to do because I loathe boredom above ALL other afflictions.
I gassed the bug and zoomed down to Newton. Read Scott Pilgrim volume 5 and then got wired up for sleep. Crashed immediately. Woke at about 3am to pee and couldn’t get back to sleep for 3 hours or so. Apparently I did sleep a little more before mandatory wake up at 6:45am.
Some straps and wires got removed. I took my pills then sat at the desk and read comics - the brain wasn’t up for much more.
They had me lie down for my first nap and I just lay there for the 20 minutes, desperately trying to remember the name of the elephant-headed Indian god of compassion and remover of obstacles. They got me up - I hadn't slept - and I called rmd and she reminded me that I was trying to remember GANESH. Thank goodness. I went back to reading comics until I ran out, then switched to book on ethics/morality that src recommended.
Near the end of the second wakeful period, the tech brought my doctor in to discuss my sleeping all day Monday. Despite the fact that he's fairly sure I don't have narcolepsy, he wanted me to go through the daytime test to completely rule it out and review my response. Unfortunately, since I slept so late Monday, and then didn’t sleep much the night before, he and the tech were pretty sure I was going to screw up my daytime sleep study.
Sheesh.
So they sent me home.
Weather was nice. Drove with the windows down. Didn’t stop anywhere due to fatigue and VERY SCARY HAIR. They mark yer scalp with a red grease pencil then put in goop, then other goop, then different goop, then wires. And, although they take the wires off before you leave, the evidence of their STICKING TO YOUR HEAD FOR EIGHT HOURS remains in all its lumpish glory. The monster's wife in Bride of Frankenstein had pretty awesome hair compared to the red-marked gel-encrusted bed-head o'mine. Also, I looked like I'd had my face taped shut, then had the tape ripped off. Big red marks. And the chin sensor gave me eight tiny pimples. Yummy.
I got home and crawled into bed. It took more than 20 minutes, but I did fall asleep and felt much better after my 5+ hour nap. (Note: I don't nap well in that my naps are almost never less than 3-4 hours long). Then I took a long hot shower, necessitated by the 5-10 minutes of nothing but hot water required to MELT THE GOO from my head.
They might have me do another sleep study plus daytime testing at some point in the future, but they'll probably have to argue with my health care provider to get it covered.
*sigh*
This was my third sleep study. No matter how much I sleep-deprive or sleep-saturate myself, I do NOT sleep well at these damn things. I just don't. I'm not sure what trying again will do for data collection. It'll probably just piss me off.