Not So Sweet Dreams

Last night I think I slept in the weirdest place in the world. Believe me I have crashed at some pretty shady places, and while this place wasn’t shady, it definitely takes the cake. Imagine if you will falling asleep with probes coming out of your head, legs, chest and face attached to a box, attached to a monitor, attached to a camera running into a room where someone is watching you sleep and marking your every movement.

Last night I drove out to beautiful Garfield Heights to do a sleep study to examine why in the world I snore so excessively. I arrived there at 8 pm, and as I turned into the parking lot I noticed it was blocked off with cones and barrels. I looked around and it didn’t seem there was any other way into the lot, so I got out of my car, moved the cones and drove in. As it turns out, there was another entrance, and they were none too pleased I moved their cones and barrels to get into the lot. Do I know how to make a good first impression or what? Let me just crash into your parking lot for my sleep study.

When I arrived they started wiring me up. I had wire running all over me. I felt like ET at the end of the movie when he is getting sick and needs to go back to his planet. Except there was no geranium and no Drew Barrymore in this scene, just me and some woman who I made small talk with as she applied snaps and wires to my face. She said I was mobile until bedtime as she connected me to a box, but for the next hour, until bedtime I read in a position which can only be described as advanced yoga.

When it was time to go to bed, I was connected to a wall in a ball of wires. If I didn’t have a sleeping disorder already, I was sure to have one now. I woke up three or four times with the weirdest expression on my face. I am sure it must have been funny to watch this all take place. Not to mention my legs got tangled in the wires so I was moving them around a lot. One of the things they observe is if you move your legs a lot. How was I not supposed to move my legs if they kept getting tangled? Probably the funniest moment for them had to be when I woke myself with my own small bodily (dis)function. I tried not to laugh and play it cool but it was hard to do. I was thinking, maybe they didn’t notice but then I remembered all the wires to monitor my every movement. My guess is that they probably did notice.

When I was woken up this morning at 6 am they asked me how I felt. I felt like how I normally feel at 6am—groggy. Apparently this isn’t a good thing either. I guess you have a sleep disorder if you don’t wake up feeling alive and alert. When the results come back from this thing in two weeks, I may have every sleep disorder in the book.