So a couple of nights ago I spent a delightful 10 hours participating in a Sleep Study.
According to my Neurologist, this IIH thing that I have (if you’re new around here you can catch up on all that news in this post) can be triggered by Sleep Apnea.
He doesn’t think I’ve got sleep apnea, but because he’s nothing if not thorough, he wanted to rule it out. So off to the hospital I went.
Now if you’ve been reading here for a while and following along on Instagram, you’ll know that I have a bit of thing about the current state of waiting rooms.
I’m yet to find an attractive one and Wednesday night’s sleep study waiting room was no exception:
Yep, that’s a copy of House & Garden magazine from 1998 and a soothing novel by Virgina Andrews.
Because let’s face it, who doesn’t want to read 40 pages of makeovers from the late 90’s followed by some sort of dark chapter book about a cat just before they’re about to be hooked up to a machine and watched on a camera while they try to get some sleep?!
Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried!
Once I’d recovered from the gift that the waiting room gods had clearly delivered me once again, my name was called and I was on my way to do the sleep study.
My nurse, who was LOVELY, but for the purposes of this blog post we shall call The Sleep Nazi, ushered me into my room and gave me a quick tour:
“There’s your ensuite” she said, pointing to the half opened door, “and you’ve got a TV. Although we can’t find the remote for this room so you’ll just need to do a little stretch to reach up and change the channel.”
Um…ok*.
“Now if you can change into your jammies and I’ll be back to wire you up and then it’s lights out.”
Um….it’s 7pm*.
“Oh and breakfast is at 6.30am, so fill out the form on your bed with what you would like for breaky. But keep in mind that I’ll be waking you at 5am, so it’s up to you if you’d like to hang around until 6.30am for breakfast.”
Um….that would be a no thank you*.
“Also, when I come back to wire you up and turn off the lights you will need to turn that phone of yours off. It interferes with the transmitters.”
Um….I’m fairly sure I signed up for a sleep study, not a walk in role on Orange Is The New Black*.
*Please note I didn’t actually say any of these things out loud. I am too polite to be so rude. But I definitely thought them.
So long story short, The Sleep Nazi was really lovely. Very caring and made sure I was as comfortable as I could be with what felt like 4,3872 wires hanging out from my head, legs, chest and arms while I tried to get some sleep.
The lights were turned off at 8pm sharp and I can confirm that The Sleep Nazi has a very strict TURN YOUR PHONE OFF NOW policy which MUST BE ADHERED TO AT ALL TIMES and kind of reminded me of being on school camp.
Although the last time I was on a school camp mobile phones hadn’t even been invented yet, so that’s probably not the best comparison.
I don’t know why, but for some reason the bed reminded me of the story Goldilocks and The Three Bears.
Kind of old school and a bit ‘This bed is tooooo hard’ But it was surprisingly comfortable, even though the blanket was paper thin and I’m fairly sure the mattress was plastic.
Ironically, despite being woken up at 5am, I actually had one of the best night’s sleep I’d had in ages. Probably because I wasn’t woken up once by Scott’s snoring!
I told the nurse that when she came to check on me in the morning and she said to me, “Oh we get that answer all the time! You wouldn’t believe how many women out there are married to men who take such good care of themselves by going to the gym and eating well, but refuse to go to the doctor and get their snoring seen to. Tell that husband of yours to get himself in here ASAP otherwise he could end up having a stroke or a heart attack and then he’ll be no use to anyone!”
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Have you ever had a Sleep Study done? Did you have to turn your phone off? And has your husband/partner/significant other had a sleep study done too? Tell me everything!
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