Thursday, January 5, 2012

"Sleep" Study

I participated in a sleep study last night in the name of research for a story I am writing. I do not know why they call it a sleep study though because with all the stuff they hook to you I don't know how they expect anyone to get much sleep. I had no less than 20 little electrodes hooked to me.. most of them to my head. There were 2 at the base on my neck, 2 on my temples, 1 right in the middle of my forehead, 1 right on the top of my head, 2 on the sides on my head, 2 by my collarbones and 2 on each leg. Plus a snore mic on my neck (to record and measure your snoring), 2 belts around my chest and stomach, an oxygen sensor on my finger and some nasal cannula to measure airflow from my nose. It took more than half an hour to get everything all hooked up. So I had a mass of wires coming from off my body.. making me very aware every time I wanted to move and which made it hard to get in the most comfortable sleeping positions. The nasal cannula and the oxygen sensor were definitely the worst because after a while I couldn't really feel the electrodes. I was awoken once because one of the electrodes fell of in the night and the tech had to come and put it back on. I also woke up once because it was really hot in my room but before I could even ask for the air to be turned on or something like that the tech came in with a fan because she was watching me (so weird) and said I looked like it was really warm. And I had to call for her once because I needed to use the bathroom and had to be unhooked from the monitor. The other thing that was weird for me was I turned my cell phone off (mostly because I forgot my charger) so I had no idea what time of night it was and I am the type of person that always looks at my clock every time I wake up in the night so it was strange to not know how much longer I had to sleep. It was an interesting sensation to know that someone was watching me the entire time I was sleeping. It made me much more aware of how long it took me to fall asleep and every time I woke up because I felt like I was being bad because I wasn't sleeping, silly I know.
The good thing was the bed was a normal (rather comfortable) queen sized bed and I took my own pillows so I did get some sleep. My sleep tech said I slept enough for them to get some good information on me and they would have my results in a week or so. I am interested to see what the results say. I don't feel like I have a lot of sleeping problems but I am still intrigued. I do snore a tiny bit but not loudly and not all night which is positive but since John sleeps like a rock I don't think this will ever be a problem. It was interesting to learn about sleep studies and why they do them but I don't plan on doing one again in the near future (or ever if I can avoid it) because I much prefer my own bed and no wires.

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