Why I Can’t Sleep – or – What will 1,300 pages of data tell you?
Yesterday I underwent my first ever overnight hospital stay. Luckily, it was only for a sleep study to find out just why I haven’t been able to get a full night’s sleep for the last 4 months. I’ve been physically and mentally exhausted for month’s now, and my impression of a mexican jumping bean in bed has rattled my wife’s sleep pattern as well. It’s gotten to the point that I was about as useful as a Amnesty International rep at a 700 Club Meeting. Thus, the sleep study to find out if the reason I wasn’t sleeping was:
- stress related
- ADD-related
- lack of exercise-related
- narcolepsy-related
- George W. Bush’s fault
- lack of beer in diet
In the process, I was subjected to monitors for my breathing, muscle movements, EKG, EEG, OMG, WWJD and every other sort of little sticky thing with an acronym, making me look like Woody Allen in Sleeper. Sleep through the night, and then have someone come in and turn out the lights for 20 minutes every hour-and-a-half, so that I could take a nap. It was like forced toddler years again.
Unfortunately, unless there is something seriously wrong, I won’t know the results until the end of September, when I get to meet with the doctor to talk over diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. My hope is that a Chimay a night is the best medicine, but somehow I bet it will involve something less pleasant, more expensive and more obtrusive. But, if it gets me a good night’s sleep, I might be able to try anything – even laying off of Ol’ Dubya.
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I’ve been through two sleep studies, and it is amazing that they can get any reliable information from these things since it is such an unnatural state for the sleeper. I ended up be prescribed a CPAP machine because I have sleep apnea. Seems to have made a difference. I hope yours is something equally easy to deal with.