The Big Sleep

As I said in the last two posts, I went for the Sleep Study on November 29th. Had I posted about it on November 30th, I would have remembered the names of the two people who were there watching me all night, but I don't remember them now. So let's name them, okay? One was a nice black girl and the other was a short guy who I think was Jewish. Hmmm. Okay, let's call the black girl Shirley and the Jewish guy Thor. Shirley was sitting at the reception desk when I came in. She brought me to the teensy little room where I would be spending the night. The best way to describe it is...spartan. It consisted of a bed, a nightstand and a closet which ostensibly should have functioned as a place for you to hang your clothes, but instead was full of wires and supplies and stuff. No cheap prints of seascapes. No mint on the pillow. Heck, there wasn't even a window. There was, however, a camera pointing right at the bed. I found that somewhat unnerving. What if I picked my nose in my sleep? What if I farted? What if I drooled? I found the whole concept of someone watching me sleep kind of creepy and voyeuristic. I started worring about whether or not I'd be able to fall asleep. Usually when that happens, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: I don't fall asleep. There was an adjoining bathroom with a shower. Very basic, very Motel 6. Shirley told me to change and come back out so she and Thor could wire me up and get started. I put on my dashing new Botany 500 pajamas from Wiesner's of New Utrecht Avenue (as opposed to Saks of Fifth Avenue) and went to find Shirley. She and Thor were sitting in a room full of computers and monitors and wires. There was an empty chair in middle of the room where they did their evil work of getting poor, unsuspecting shlubs like me ready to be their guinea pig for the evening. Once I was in the chair, they started putting leads all over me. See that guy up there on the right? That's a very accurate picture of what I looked like when they got finished with me, except for the nasal cannula. I wasn't getting one of those; I was getting a C-PAP mask...there was no way I was gonna sleep! They let me try on a few different versions, and one was less comfortable than the next. They were all truly horrible. I started flashing back to when I wore one in Beth Israel, and that certainly didn't help anything. I almost pulled another "get me my pants!" tantrum (see post of August 12th) but instead I sang "whenever I feel afraid" from "The King and I" to myself and that made me feel better. After I picked out which mask made me feel the least like Hannibal Lecter, Thor brought me back to the room. Thor thtarted to thay what all the wires were for, but I thtopped him. He hooked everything up and left me lying there. Thoon...I mean soon...I heard his voice. "Can you hear me, Ron," it said. I said yeth. Yes. He told me to make a snoring sound. Honest. Then a coughing sound. Then he had me do them both again. He came back into the room, said goodnight and shut the light. I told him to leave the door open a crack. I thought I saw him smirk as he walked out. About half an hour later I was actually nodding off. Just as Mr. Sandman was tippy toe-ing out, Thor came back in and nudged me out of my very tenuous slumber. There was a problem, he said. They were having some technical difficulties with the room I was in and I had to move to another one. I asked if I was at least gonna get the Presidential Suite this time. No reaction. No sense of humor. Frankly, I was quite ticked off: I was somewhere I didn't want to be in the first place, and now they were bugging me in the middle of the night. Predictably, the new room was no improvement. Thor reconnected all my Frankenstein stuff, apologized for the umpteenth time, shut the light, left the door open a crack, smirked and left. Against all odds, I fell asleep around 1:30. At 6:45, there was good ol' Thor, shaking me awake. He then left the room and I once again heard him asking me to snore and cough. Someday I wish someone would explain that to me. I would have asked him, but I got the impression that he was dumb as a bag of rocks, so I figured I'd better pass. I showered, got dressed and left the room. On my way out I asked saw Shirley poring over some data on her computer. I asked her what my results were, and she said it takes a few weeks to analyze everything. A few weeks? I only slept for five hours! Betcha they get paid by the hour, those two. They told me DePalo would be getting the results. I went home, burned my pajamas, climbed into my obscenely comfortable bed with the pillow-top matress, and fell blissfully back to sleep.

...AND DON'T CALL ME SHIRLEY!!!