I spent the night in a sleep clinic

Never Done: I spent the night in a sleep clinic

Even though I went in at 10 PM on Monday night, I decided to write about this as something I did on Tuesday, because I spent my first 7 Tuesday hours attached to wires, following the instructions of the staff at the Center, and trying to sleep.

When you go into a sleep center at night, you are led to a room -- like a small hotel room with no windows (and in my case, as over-airconditioned as many hotel rooms.) You are given a clipboard full of questionnaires to fill out. How long does it usually take you to fall asleep? How many hours of sleep do you get? Do you take any medications? Do you wake rested (on a scale of 1-10.) You are asked to change immediately into your pajamas, brush your teeth and wash your face, and then go out to the main area -- the nursing station if you will -- to get hooked up to wires. Wires on your legs, wires on your chest, wires all over your face and head. A microphone on your larynx. Wires wires wires. Then you get to hang out until you get sleepy, at which point you're supposed to call the nurses and they come attach the wires to machines, and put a nasal cannula in your nose. Plus, there's a camera filming you. And now we have to run a small battery of tests.

Close your eyes
Open your eyes
Using just your eyes, move you eyes up and down
Using just your eyes, move your eyes left and right
Blink five times fast

Breathe through your nose
Breathe through your mouth
Hold your breath until I tell you to stop
Move your left foot once
Move your right foot once

Relax! Sleep! Nighty night!

What can I say? It's not like I expected to get a good night's sleep. And I didn't. I got a night's sleep that was normal for me -- only worse. Which is to say that it fit the pattern of a bad night of sleep -- waking up at 4, tossing and turning, hard time sleeping from 4-5:30, then a deeper sleep til the alarm (or in this case the nurse) wakes me. The only differences were that I was uncomfortable from all the clips and tapes and wires and nasal intrusions, and I was aware that I was being evaluated. Which actually made me hope for a normal-bad night of sleep, so they could get a good read on what goes on for me, which was a comfort in the long, often sleepless night.

In the morning, the nurse asked me to go through the same set of tests.

Close your eyes
Open your eyes
Using just your eyes, move you eyes up and down
Using just your eyes, move your eyes left and right
Blink five times fast

Breathe through your nose
Breathe through your mouth
Hold your breath until I tell you to stop
Move your left foot once
Move your right foot once

and then sent me in to shower the paste off my face and out of my hair, get dressed, and fill in a morning questionnaire. How long do you estimate it took you to fall asleep? How many hours of sleep do you estimate you got? Did you take any medications while here? On a scale of 1-10, how rested were you when you woke?

Goodbye! Have a good day! The doctor will be in touch!

And before I knew it I was in Madison Square Park, the sun starting to steam up the day, searching for some breakfast away from my usual breakfast at home, and then kicked uptown to work.

I didn't expect to hear anything from them for quite some time, but the call came on Tuesday while I was in a meeting. When I called back, the person on the phone reported to me, "You have extremely fragmented sleep." It took all my powers not to say, "No shit, Sherlock." But she went on to describe anatomical details that they observed in the night, and she invited me in next week to look at graphs of my night of sleep, and discuss the results with my Argentine-Uruguayan doctor. So I think my job now is to practice Hope, and Patience, and Humility -- and maybe I'll start to become a more rested person!