Asleep at the...Sleep Lab

"So Jeff, how was your night?"

"Well, I spent half of it getting gelled and wired up with a dozen different contacts and sensors, and the other half huddled beneath an unfamiliar bedspread and the unforgiving gaze of a ceiling mounted night vision camera; occasionally I woke to careful prodding of a faceless technician as she adjusted or replaced some portion of the tangled noose of wires that kept me within arm's length of the computers mounted on my bedside table. In the morning I crept out, fashioned a crude rope from my sheets, scaled down the side of the hospital, and ran till I couldn't see even it's outline on the horizon.

But tell me, how was your night?"

But seriously, it was pretty neat. ^_^

Actually, it was also quite comfortable. Considering the amount of wiring strung up around you by the time they tuck you in, you've still got alot of room to toss and turn as you like; the rooms were pleasant and the pillows almost luxuriously soft. They clip a small plastic breath monitor twixt your mouth and nose that takes a tad getting used to, but it's unobtrusive enough that you end up forgetting it's there within a few minutes. That was my experience, anyway.

And the sleep technicians were great; I actually felt kind of bad for them, given that their own sleep schedules must be a little out of sync with the rest of the world. As mine quipped: you work at a Sleep Disorder Clinic? Congratulations, you've got a sleep disorder!

I asked the technician who woke me if she had spotted anything interesting on my screen(like, me turning into a werewolf or something awesome like that), and apparently she did notice some trouble breathing, some snoring, and some 'apnea events', which I suppose is me waking briefly due to the aforementioned breathing issues. Whatever it was, it wasn't bad enough to warrant my immediate 'masking' with the device that's used to treat severe Sleep Apnea, which they warned me might take place if they observed too many apnea events over the course of the night.

Interesting as it was, I am however looking forward to sleeping unencumbered and unobserved in my own bed tonight. ^_^