I’m Going to a Sleep Study

“Can you come Saturday?”

Say what now?

Why is it that every other specialist takes weeks to months to get into, but when I reluctantly ask my family doctor to refer me for a sleep study…so people can WATCH ME SLEEP and they can fit me with a darth vader sleeping mask…the sleep clinic calls a mere two hours after I have left the doctor’s office? And they must have known that I was planning to flee the country to get out of it because they booked me in for two nights later. That’s clearly not enough time to forge a passport. It’s also not enough time to buy pyjamas that don’t have coffee stains. Lesson learned – always have a Go Bag for dodging creepy medical appointments.

I know the real reason they had an opening. It’s the beginning of Daylight Savings Time during my appointment. Who in the hell voluntarily attaches themselves to electrodes during a time change?

Actually I’m thinking attaching myself to them at any time may be poorly thought through.

And what is going to happen to the missing hour of data when time suddenly springs ahead? Maybe they’ll declare that I was clinically dead for an hour. I think that would significantly reduce the expectations that society has for what I get done in a day.

“Well I think I’m doing pretty well for someone who was dead for an hour,” will be my standard response to everything.

Worse than potential electrocution or being dead for an hour is that they record my sleep on some kind of military grade night camera (which I am totally stealing on my way out by the way).

What if I do something weird while I sleep? I already know that I occasionally take my socks off and stick them under my pillow!!!! Who does that?

Molly keeps asking me if they will be able to tell what I am thinking about. I told her no, but what do I know? They could know exactly how much I think about ice cream and netflix and how little time I spend thinking about my taxes and what I’m going to make for dinner. I’m more worried for them than for myself though…you probably can’t unsee the complicated matrix of anxious thoughts, to do lists and google searches that exists inside my head. And good luck trying to document that shit.

I have a few additional concerns…

Do you wear a bra while you’re sleeping at a sleep study?

What if I yell out my pin number?

Or my facebook password?

Or if the baked beans that I regretfully ate for lunch kick in? Can toxic fumes affect the results? All studies were discontinued at 3am due to unsafe air quality at the centre. Oh my God, I’m going to be in the paper.

There’s no putting it off…except for the raging cold I’ve developed today. I don’t even know if they can still do the study on a person who is blowing her nose every six seconds. It appears she had 85 brain hemorrhages during the first hour, which explains why she later died for an hour. The report should make for some interesting reading.

My biggest mistake in all of this was in not going for the study when I had two babies and a toddler – I would have slept in the middle of Union Station on live television if I thought I could have an uninterrupted night of sleep back then.

Rookie.

On second thought…the kids are fighting now…I’d stay and help but I’ve got a sleep study to get to…for a week.