Sleeping on the job
My doctor set me up for a sleep study last night, so sleep was not a natural by-product of the night.
For those playing the home game, a sleep study tries to determine why you don't. Sleep apnea and other problems are discovered; if you do have sleep apnea, and need a CPAP machine to breathe for you, they can find the right pressure to run it on.
The fully-equipped sleep study subject has:
EEG electrodes on scalp, forehead, eyes, ears, back of head, to detect brain wave states and REM sleep;
EMG electrodes on shoulders and legs, to detect Restless Leg Syndrome
A microphone on the base of the throat to detect snoring (they could put it in the parking lot, for me)
Chest and belly bands to monitor breathing;
A blood O2 sensor on the fingertip;
a tip sensor to tell them which side I'm sleeping on;
a mouth-and-nose face mask, hooked up to the CPAP ventilator pushing air into me.
I tried to take some phone pictures of this, they didn't come out well. Think of a Sci-Fi channel movie where a man's mind is transferred into a dancing bear, and I'm the recipient.
The thing is, if you *can* sleep with all this high-tech ironmongery applied to your person, you obviously need more sleep than you're getting.
The poor tech works 9 PM to 6 AM, M-F. She has *no* social life.
Anyway, they took a night's worth of squiggly lines out of my head, so now we see what they make of it. But with it all, I'm taking today as a medical day to catch up on the sleep I didn't get last night.
For those playing the home game, a sleep study tries to determine why you don't. Sleep apnea and other problems are discovered; if you do have sleep apnea, and need a CPAP machine to breathe for you, they can find the right pressure to run it on.
The fully-equipped sleep study subject has:
EEG electrodes on scalp, forehead, eyes, ears, back of head, to detect brain wave states and REM sleep;
EMG electrodes on shoulders and legs, to detect Restless Leg Syndrome
A microphone on the base of the throat to detect snoring (they could put it in the parking lot, for me)
Chest and belly bands to monitor breathing;
A blood O2 sensor on the fingertip;
a tip sensor to tell them which side I'm sleeping on;
a mouth-and-nose face mask, hooked up to the CPAP ventilator pushing air into me.
I tried to take some phone pictures of this, they didn't come out well. Think of a Sci-Fi channel movie where a man's mind is transferred into a dancing bear, and I'm the recipient.
The thing is, if you *can* sleep with all this high-tech ironmongery applied to your person, you obviously need more sleep than you're getting.
The poor tech works 9 PM to 6 AM, M-F. She has *no* social life.
Anyway, they took a night's worth of squiggly lines out of my head, so now we see what they make of it. But with it all, I'm taking today as a medical day to catch up on the sleep I didn't get last night.