Sleep, O Sleep

I am the Queen of Sleep. If there was a Sleep Olympics, I'd get at least a silver medal. I almost never have insomnia. I can sleep anywhere at any time. When I was in hard labor, with contractions three minutes apart, I'd fall asleep and dream between contractions. I go to sleep easily and wake up fine. I rarely complain about being tired in the morning but I love to nap.

My husband is really good at many things but sleep is not among them. He especially sucks at napping. At night, every little sound (the garbage truck, the newspaper delivery) disturbs him. Ironically, a crying baby never really intruded on his rest. But that remains a mystery.

Many years ago, he told me that I made "cute, purring" noises when I sleep. As we have aged, the cuteness seems to have evaporated and now he tells me that my snoring wakes him and when I am not snoring, he can't sleep in anticipation of my snoring. So he flees to Mike's empty bed. I know a lot of couples sleep apart with no ill marital effects but I can't stand it.

I tried BreathRight strips and nasal sprays and decongestants but nothing has been effective enough to satisfy Chris. So I finally asked my doctor for a sleep study. Actually, I asked her if there was a surgery to fix snoring but she said the current procedures were not very effective for women and that I should lose weight. In the interim, I settled for a sleep study because Chris was convinced that a CPAP machine would solve our joint problem.

A few weeks later, at 10:30 p.m. I drove up to an office building in Concord and buzzed to be let in. The tech showed me to my bedroom for the evening. Former offices had been converted to nice little hotel-like rooms with doctor's office accouterments. The tech was really nice and friendly and chatted as he attached big bands around my chest and stomach and 22 wires to various points: my forehead, jaw, neck and legs. Then he gathered them all up into a big ponytail and hooked them all into a box beside the bed. Now, I was trapped in bed. He had me try several different masks with a CPAP machine since, if he noticed any apneas, he would add the machine later. He stuck an oxygen meter on my finger and left the room to check on the camera that filmed my every move. He had me perform various movements (blink, bite down, move my eyes) so he could identify those actions from the readouts. Then, around midnight, he came back and turned off the lights. What??? No reading before bed? And I have to sleep on my back?

I eventually did fall asleep and slept more or less until 4 a.m. when the tech came in to reattach a wire I dislodged. I was wide awake and ready to go home then but he made me stay. When I went back to sleep, I dreamed that I was in a classroom with a bunch of other people who had undergone a sleep study. The leaders stood in front of the room and critiqued our sleep styles. 

At about 6:30, he woke me up, yanked off all the tape and sent me home. Since he hadn't added a CPAP, I thought I hadn't had a problem. A week went by, then two without hearing anything. I called my doctor and she hadn't received the results. A week later, I got another authorization for a sleep study. Did they lose the previous one? When the sleep center called to make an appointment, they said the second one would be using a CPAP machine all night. What joy!

The next Friday night, I was back at the office building. Different room, different tech. This woman was all business, no friendly chatting. She also took additional pains to cause me discomfort: she drew (hard) marks where she intended to attach wires, used some crazy freezing gel to clean the spots, attached the wires with huge amounts of goop that turned rock-hard overnight and taped everything with many, many pieces of tape that would remove much skin in the morning.

The ice-cream on the cake was the CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine. A tube forces air from the machine into your nose and mouth to keep the airway open. Some masks only cover your nose and some go right up your nostrils. When I opened my mouth while the machine was running, the moving air formed a vacuum that totally freaked me out. But at least I could wear my glasses. Having learned something from my last visit, I took my IPhone and listened to Terry Pratchett in lieu of reading or being read to by Chris. I fell asleep on the very edge of the bed, flat on my back, holding the air tube on my stomach with both hands. I swear I didn't move all night. Well, all five hours of night. The tech turned off the light at midnight and sent me home at 5:00 a.m. I didn't remember a single dream but I didn't have any hot flashes either. So???

Another couple of weeks passed with no word from my doctor before I got a call from a medical devices company saying they had received approval from the insurance company for a CPAP machine but they were waiting for some additional paperwork from the doctor. A week later, someone from the doctor's office called to tell me that they had sent the paperwork but NO ONE EVER TOLD ME what my my sleep study showed and what it meant.

Another week passed until the medical devices company called to make an appointment to meet with a respiratory therapist and receive my machine. I thought I might get some information then but it turned out to be a group "class" in using the CPAP. On one side of me was a 26 year old mouth-breather who was texting the whole time. On the other was an older African American couple who were wearing competing perfumes and colognes (I was the loser). The gentleman smacked his lips and made slurpy sounds the whole time.

The RP gave me a barely legible copy of my sleep study results. I had NO REM sleep (no wonder I didn't remember my dreams) and I woke up about 40 times per hour (0-5 is the norm). I don't know what the results were for the first test (sans CPAP) but I'm sure they were better.

Anyway, I got this mask. It's very fashionable. Next Fall, it'll be on all the runways. I started using it last night while reading before bed. It feels so odd to have air pushing into you. For some reason, a little claustrophobic although nowhere near as bad as those full face masks. When I turned it on, the cats went about a foot straight into the air. Al wouldn't come near me and Tiger kept looking around worried.

Lying in bed listening to my breath was not helping me sleep so I had to listen to some Terry Pratchett until Chris called me trying to find my phone so he could play Scrabble with Robin.

I think I slept for about an hour until an asthma attack made me fling the mask to the floor. Wish me luck!

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth