It Was A Dark And Stormy Night...

Monday 12-26-11
No, really, it was!

The Sunday night after Thanksgiving was my overnight sleep study.  I arrived at the hospital at 8 pm, right on time to begin the paperwork and preparations for the evening.  It was pouring buckets of rain and, in typical fashion, the closest parking places were still a lengthy walk away from the hospital entrance.  So I wagged myself, my overnight bag and a not-quite-large-enough umbrella from parking lot to hospital door without getting too soaked.

After filling out some forms and getting acquainted with Renee, my sleep tech, together we began the rather involved process of getting me prepped for the night.  Electrodes and wires were attached to my temples, jaws (to detect if I grind my teeth in my sleep), ankles (to monitor feet and leg movements), and various spots on my scalp to measure my brain activity and the various levels of my sleep.  I also wore a pulse oxymeter on my fingertip to measure my oxygen levels during the night.  Then the whole bundle of wires got hooked up to a monitor at my bedside.

The room itself was pretty spartan, although not uncomfortable.  There was a television which I never turned on, but for people whose bedtime routine includes TV it is good to have it there.  I brought my Bible because reading it is my bedtime routine; I've done it for years, reading through the Bible annually, mostly at bedtime (and occasionally on my lunch hour).  I can't really say how much Bible reading has improved the quality of my sleep, but it has certainly improved the quality of my life over the years.

I don't know how most people perceive their sleep study experiences, but it seemed to take me a long time to get to sleep that night.  When I went in to discuss the findings of my study, the doctor told me that it had indeed taken me over an hour to get to sleep that night.  (There was no clock in my room so I had to estimate how long it took me to fall alseep and how much sleep I thought I had gotten on the questionnaire I filled out the next morning.)  Considering I was hooked up to a lot of wires, it was not as uncomfortable as I had thought it would be.  I am a side sleeper and I know that I wake up momentarily every time I turn over, I have as long as I can remember.  My sleep felt fitful to me, and the findings confirmed that it had been.  I only experienced 2 brief periods of REM sleep, and during both periods my oxygen level dropped to about 82%.  My diagnosis is mild sleep apnea and there is a CPAP unit in my future (continuous positive airway pressure) to make sure that my breathing and oxygen stay at a healthy level while I sleep.

Sleep apnea is common among obese people and can be a life-threatening condition.  Most people are unaware thay they suffer from sleep apnea, which varies from mild to severe, in which cases patients actually stop breathing multiple times per night.  Once other causes are ruled out, sleep apnea can also often be resolved with weight loss, surgical or otherwise.  While I continue medically supervised weight loss prior to surgery, and as I get adjusted to my CPAP, I am hopeful that my sleep quality will be better and I may feel much more rested and energetic.  If it makes the kind of difference my doctor thinks it will, I may feel better than I have in years.  That is definitely worth a dark and stormy night spent at the hospital!