The Grad School Diaries: Déjà vu All Over Again

If you’ve never had the experience of having sensors stuck to your head with unpleasant white goo while simultaneously wired for pulse, respiration, and a half-dozen other sensors, all I can say is you aren’t missing much. And if you’ve never had to try to sleep while so equipped, my advice would be to just quietly give thanks to whomever you believe looks out for you. So why am I going though this procedure again? Well, it seems that the first time didn’t take…

As noted in my previous rant on this subject, my first sleep study was an unpleasant (one might even say creepy) experience that would have been a depressing and lonely reminder of one’s mortality except that I was too busy being grossed out, irritated, and eventually in pain to really notice. When the results of the first study were termed “inconclusive” by the sleep specialist reviewing the case (whom I still have never met) my primary-care physician decided that enough was enough and pre-approved using a different test center for the retest. Which brings me here, to the Midwest Center for Sleep Disorders on the south side of town; a facility purpose-built for this type of research and not just adapted from an existing hospital ward. The rooms look more like a business hotel room (or a low-end B&B room), the beds are much more comfortable, and the bathrooms don’t look like something out of the “Saw” movie franchise. But on the downside, there’s still the unpleasant white goo to deal with, and this time I’ve got a machine blowing air up my nose as well…

It turns out that there are a whole series of sleep disorders that are caused by your airway being partly or fully blocked while you sleep (how much blockage there is and why it’s there depends on which disorder you’ve got), and while there is a surgical procedure that can correct some of the obstructions, it’s generally cheaper, safer, and far less painful to just set up a positive air pressure down your windpipe to keep your airway open. This requires the use of a small machine called a Continuous Positive Air Pressure device, or CPAP, which, in plain language, works by blowing air up your nose while you sleep…

Maybe it’s the warmer atmosphere; maybe it’s the more comfortable bed; maybe it’s having enough slack in the sensor leads to change position if I need to; and maybe having air blown up one’s nose actually works as advertised, but the results are different almost immediately. Getting used to the modified airflow is tricky at first, but the attending technician’s advice to think of riding in a convertible and breathing from the airflow works for me, and in a few moments I’m asleep. Even more impressive, however, is that I STAY asleep – nearly seven hours before being woken up at the end of the test. It’s the longest continuous period I can remember staying asleep since my neck surgery in 2007…

Waking up, getting the various sensors removed, and washing the goo out of my hair is different, too. This facility doesn’t have a full bathroom in each sleep room; it’s a medical office building and probably wasn’t plumbed for so many fixtures. There’s a couple of dedicated shower rooms up the hall from the room I slept in which would not look out of place in a gym or locker room, and which have the added bonus of being spotlessly clean. Finishing the paperwork and going home is more like checking out of a hotel as a business traveler than leaving the hospital; I’ve got places to go and things to do, but it’s less of a re-birth and more like going home. Which I then do. I’ll get my own CPAP unit in a few days, and try to adjust to sleeping with air blowing up my nose at home, too. Which may take some doing – but at least I won’t have goo stuck to my head while I’m about it…