The Grad School Diaries: Sleeping for Science

So there I was, lying on my back on a hard, lumpy bed in a private room in the Sparrow Hospital (St. Lawrence Campus) sleep center, with a dozen or so wires stuck to my head with this thick white goo, six more attached to my body and legs with conventional EKG sensors, and tubes up my nose and mouth. I couldn’t move more than a couple of inches in any direction without pulling out a wire or dislodging a sensor (and generally ripping out a clump of hair in the process), my head had to stay at an uncomfortable angle for the same reason, and the remarkably uncomfortable mattress was making my knees, ankles and toes hurt…

None of which would really matter, I suppose, except I was there to sleep…

I’ve had insomnia since I was a teenager, and never thought much of it. The sad fact is, no one really knows what causes insomnia, and there’s not much anyone can do about it. However, one of the very common complications associated with diabetes and high blood pressure is sleep apnea; a condition where you stop breathing while you’re asleep, leading to excessive strain on your heart muscle, lack of restorative sleep, poor memory function, bad concentration, weight gain, mood swings, a series of endocrine and glandular problems far too disgusting to describe, and in extreme cases, death. Under the circumstances (e.g. feeling like I had not had a decent night’s sleep in a year), it seemed worth looking into…

Unfortunately, the only way to really determine what is going on inside someone’s body while they’re asleep is to have them go to sleep while connected to various sensors and then monitor them to see what happens. Which means sticking a couple of dozen wires to their body with an unpleasant, thick white goo and hope for the best. Which is how I wound up in the Sparrow/St. Lawrence sleep lab, wired like a hacker’s basement and trying to sleep under some of the worst conditions imaginable…

It probably wouldn’t have been as bad if I’d had enough slack in the sensor leads to be able to lie on my side, which is how I normally sleep. It would also have gone a lot better if I’d been able to go to the bathroom unassisted; my 45-year-old bladder won’t make it through the night anymore, and having to call for someone to disconnect the leads so you can go relieve yourself is rather undignified. Nor did it help that “calling someone” in this context meant literally calling into the empty air, since the room is monitored by audio channel and low-light/infrared camera the whole time you’re in it. Fortunately, the idea of being watched doesn’t usually creep me out; I was able to ignore the camera without too much trouble. The room itself was another matter…

Sparrow Hospital is a perfectly respectable facility, and the Sleep Center rooms are essentially normal semi-private hospital rooms, only with the usual beds removed and replaced with a single full-size mattress set. But that’s exactly the problem: without the energy of a working hospital floor (which tends to resemble an overturned anthill even during the night shift), the place feels like a morgue. It’s deathly quiet, and even if you’re not an imaginative man (which I rather am, unfortunately) it’s all too easy to find yourself wondering how many people have actually died in this volume of space, and if this is what it would be like to die alone. It’s been said that character is who you are in the dark; I would probably add something about being alone, uncomfortable, and uncertain if your condition is ever going to improve – if there is a time beyond this place, and if you will be allowed to reach it…

Finally, around 5:15 am, as I was wondering if I should call for another pee break, the technician on duty came up on the intercom and said they had the data they needed, and I could go home now. I’d originally wanted to bypass the old, dingy and otherwise unpleasant-looking shower and just go home, but I couldn’t imagine getting dressed without getting the goo out of my hair first. So I grit my teeth and went for it, hoping the thing had been cleaned more recently (and thoroughly) than it looked. When I was clean enough to manage, I dressed hastily and bolted for home…

There was a massive thunderstorm throwing lightning about, but by the time I turned onto our street the worst of it had passed by, and the first light of dawn was breaking. I ran upstairs to tell my long-suffering spouse about my night, and things immediately began to improve. Home is where the heart is; my home is wherever I shall find her…