I was appreciably nervous when I went in for my sleep study. Another confession time here, I actually postponed the study initially by two weeks because I caught a head cold. I didn’t plan to catch it, but starting just after Christmas; a head cold traveled around our family making the rounds and seemed to come back to our house every other week. But I only postponed by two weeks, so when the day of the sleep study came, I worked triple hard around the house. I wanted everything done. I had no idea what to expect when I went in for it other than I was going to be sleeping there and they were going to be monitoring me.
Getting Set Up
First and foremost, let me give a shout out to the nurse, Crystal, who hooked me up to all the equipment. You have to have hookups on your legs, forehead, head, face and chest. They attach an oxygen monitor to your finger and you get the nasal attachment to your nose as well. I felt like something out of a bad science fiction show. She gets me all hooked up and I have on these huge chest bands and she tucks the little monitor box into the chest bands and tells me to go ahead and use the bathroom if I need to before she plugs everything in.
I walked into their bathroom and took one look at myself in the mirror and burst out laughing. All vanity aside, I looked insane. The good humor helped to rob me of the nervous anxiety from earlier. I finished up in the restroom and Crystal got me tucked in. She adjusted the temperature of the room to something cooler at my request. I noticed the camera in the corner and realized that this was also a part of the monitoring process. She made sure all the leads were hooked up and then asked me if I had any questions. I didn’t, so it was lights out time.
Sleeping in the Study
I don’t know whether it was because I was there at the sleep study place (the unfamiliar surroundings) or simply because I wasn’t at home so the constant waking up was more noticeable, but I recalled at least a dozen times when I woke up for no reason. I felt like I had difficulty going to sleep, yet the charts the next morning indicated that I had gone right to sleep, but never left stage 1, I was in a constant state of arousal.
When Crystal ‘woke’ me up at 5 the next morning, I had a horrible headache, I was groggy, disoriented and generally felt like someone had backed a truck over me. I was also very thirsty. I drank lots of water while she removed all the monitoring nodes and listened to her tell me about what she monitored. She said that I definitely had sleep apnea, she recorded many events that would have to be analyzed by the physician, but she expected that I would be back in their office in a week or two to begin the CPAP therapy.
The Aftermath
By the time I drove home (35 minutes), I was ready to go back to bed. I felt like I’d been through the ringer. I also had to confront the idea that sleep apnea, something I have researched and written about objectively in the past, was now a reality for me. I also had to wonder for how many years I’ve had this condition.
You see, sleep apnea is a catch-22, it’s exacerbated by weight, yet the condition itself prevents you from getting regular sleep which in turn prevents your metabolism from performing efficiently which in turn leads to increased weight or at least difficulty with losing weight. It also explains why it takes me so long to get over illness and to get back up to speed after debilitating injury or surgeries. It explains my struggle with focus and my attention span problems that have come back after many years of coping with them.
I pulled into my garage and sat there for a long time, just thinking about it. I had sleep apnea. I now have a name for what is wrong with me. I also have some possible solutions. Why didn’t I feel better?