Sleep Study

For the last year and a half or so I have been exhausted. I mean, driving to work in the morning and sitting at a long light leaves me seconds from falling asleep in the car.

When I go to bed at night, I'm tired. And normally, I fall asleep pretty quickly. When I sleep, I feel like I sleep well. I don't remember waking up most of the time (however I am notorious for talking in my sleep). Every once in a while I have to get up for the restroom, but I go back to bed very quickly.

So, I decided to go to the PCP (primary care physician) and ask about the fatigue. She took bloodwork (checked for lymes, iron, mono, pretty much whatever you can think of that would cause fatigue) and it all came out fine. I apparently have a tiny itty bitty level of mono that she could see so I would have had it a while ago but nothing active.

This leads us to the sleep study. My PCP referred me to a sleep specialist to see if he can figure out what is wrong with me.

So here are some pretty entertaining pictures of the sleep study (didn't bring my camera so I am sorry for the quality).

This is a picture of the room. It was pretty much like a small hotel room. It had a bed, lounge chair, bathroom with a shower, TV, etc.

The TV

The spy camera that was watching me while I slept. Super creepy but it wasn't like there were cameras everywhere.

After sitting still for over a half hour with my nurse-friend spackeling sensors to my head, chest and legs.

Sensors on the legs

The typical Facebook/Myspace bathroom mirror picture. In this case, it was quite useful to take a picture of all of the gadgets that were sticking on or hanging off of me.

Told you sensors were spackelled to my head

Overall it was a decent experience. I slept a lot better than I thought that I would with all of that crap on me. There were also some tubes that were placed up my nose so they could monitor the amount of carbon dioxide that I was exhaling. Actually that was the most annoying part of it. Because of them having to hook all of that up to a central spot, if I needed to use the restroom, someone had to come and unhook me. So when i woke up around 4am and had to pee, I just closed my eyes and went back to bed. I woke up a second time around 5:50 and spoke to the man in the ceiling (there was an intercom so they could listen to me sleeping too!!) and they came and released me for the day.

I wish that I had taken a picture of the oh-so-sexy hair that I had after they removed all of the sensors from my head. Just look at that first picture of me, and imagine my hair about 4 inches higher and more "mad scientist"-like.

I get the results July 15th.

We'll see...