I know that everybody has been worried about me since I went public about my sleep issues. I appreciate the concern during this difficult time. I never knew there were so many people out there who loved to talk about sleep or brag about their CPAP machines. I now count myself among them. It's fun to brag about sleep issues! It makes people feel bad about getting a good night's sleep. And they should feel bad! Sleeping through the night is just another way of showing off.
I spent the night last week at the Sleep Center. It's like a creepy hotel. It's next to the hospital. You show up and they have all these little bedrooms lined up for people to sleep in. The rooms are tastefully and non-descriptively decorated; there are cross-stitches on the wall and watercolors of ladies wearing sun hats. When I arrived my bed had already been turned down and the lights were low. The room was filled with the soft hum of white noise. It sounds romantic, but it wasn't. Because I was sleeping alone and was eventually wired up with about four thousand devices.
You can see from this picture two things:
1. Several chins
2. Four thousand devices
The nurse took this picture. Had I known it would be such a horrific angle I would have had her retake it. But I didn't want to seem vain or shallow. It's kind of a guy thing. Every picture is "good enough." We are notorious for pretending like we don't care what we look like in pictures.
Anyway, after the nurses basically wired me up like a time bomb they let me read for a little while before bed. They told me to let them know when I was ready for them to turn the light off. How would I do that, I wondered? They told me just to talk and they would come. It was at this point that I realized that there were four cameras trained on me, and that I was essentially wired for sound. When I was ready for lights off I merely said "I'm ready" at a really low volume and my nurse was there in seconds. Isn't that a little spooky? Spooky and exciting? In retrospect I should have asked for more things. "Man, I would love a rice krispie treat." "Golly, I sure wouldn't turn down a head massage."
In the middle of the night all hell broke loose with my snoring and before I knew it this guy was wrestling me into a CPAP device. My arms were flailing around and I was gasping like Bane and I finally ripped it off. I asked him if I could put the device on myself (geez louise!) and he acquiesced. So I strapped myself in and slept most of the rest of the night like a baby. A baby comic book villain.
Yesterday I got a call from the sleep center. The results are in! I have severe sleep apnea. I averaged about 50 "incidents" per hour. So that means that 50 times an hour I wake up or stop breathing. So I never get deep sleep. And that makes me grouchy and irritable when I go see things like The Hunger Games. I will be sleeping with a CPAP for good now, which will make my love life even more entertaining and mysterious. But I wanted to let you know, so you can stop praying for me. And also because I wanted to brag about those 50 incidents per hour. Wow! Top that!
