We Ain’t Got Rhythm

Wired For Dreams — Originally uploaded by LexnGer

Well this won’t be news to anyone stalking me on facebook & flickr as well as reading this blog, but on Sunday night I went to St.Mike’s to participate in a Sleep Study.

What instigated this wired-night was a fairly recent diagnosis of Arrhythmia for both my parents, and thus the subject of the post. Mom’s arrhythmia is so exciting in fact that she’s gone to the hospital a couple of times for resyncing. Which is less like syncing your palm and more like boosting your car.

While it’s fascinating that you can use large electrical pulses to get the lobes of your heart resynced, I have to say it’s not something I’m personally interested in trying out. Ever. I don’t care how good the drugs are.

In an effort to ensure this is not a part of my future, my doctor and I decided it would be smart to check and see if I have Sleep Apnea. It’s a sleep disorder where you stop breathing during sleep.  I have many of the indicators including a spouse whose sleep is regularly disturbed by my tossing, turning and my snoring. Which early in our relationship (say around years 2-7) he suggested could be “life threatening”. I think it was life threatening because it pissed him off so much he might just smother me for a good night’s sleep. But I digress.

So, Sunday night, in I trundle to St. Mikes, where they wire me up like a Christmas tree.  

They wired up my legs to test for restless leg syndrome, my finger to test for oxygen absorption, my jaw to test for teeth grinding, my head for eye movement, brain waves and “dreaming.”

The technician took a moment to tell me while they could tell that I was dreaming, they couldn’t tell what I was dreaming.
“Seriously? People actually think you might be peeping in on their dreams?”
“Yes, that’s why we tell you now we can’t see your dreams, so you don’t ask me what you were dreaming about.”

Then they strapped me up with two very attractive belts which looked like overstretched, overused tensor bandages.  One around my tummy and one around my chest. And oh, boy did I look sexy then.  Of course, that’s when Gerry hauled out the camera and offered to document the session.   Though to be fair, while I was being wired up and strapped down, Gerry also hid little love notes in my book, my boots and in my pillow.

Once Gerry stopped teasing me for being “so wired, how will you sleep?” and headed on home, I got plugged in and crashed myself.

Other than being woken up regularly to readjust cabling (which my friend Kelo suggests is  a regular part of this testing not really to “readjust” anything), it wasn’t that bad.

I was woken up by a loud neighbour around 6am, and out by 6:30.  With goo still in my hair I vetoed the S*bucks, jumped on my bike and came home to sleep.

It’ll take until February to know if I’m apneatic or not. But for all you couch surfers out there, don’t forget the earplugs, I snore. Just probably not to the beat.