A Night at the Woolcock

I had my sleep study last night, and it was interesting indeed.

They told us to have dinner beforehand, so I had a tuna subway sandwich at Broadway, with a pistachio gelatoshake before walking down. The walk is really quite short all things considering, just a tad hilly though in two sections and I got there before 7:30pm. I intercommed reception and they let me in, where I signed off on my medicare claim, and was shown the recreation room where two older gentlemen were, one was watching the television and the other reading a Mx (newspaper). The show was Two and a Half Men. A little later, a middle aged, slightly weighty woman also entered and sat down with us, and she struck up a conversation with the gentleman reading the paper. The wait was quite a while, almost to 8pm before a older gentleman by the name of Kevin came along and got me and the other fellow watching the television.

We followed him through the mini-maze of room (I was told by someone that the Woolcock is one of the largest sleep labs in the world? I don't know if that is fact, just saying what I was told) and I was deposited in Room 2047/Sleep 3, next to the other person. The room was similar to a motel room, a small wall-mounted "desk" a small tall cupboard that had a pillow inside with space to put stuff/hang stuff, a double bed, bedside chest of drawer, and a en suite bathroom. No windows, though it did have a LCD screen that might have been a television.

Kevin, the sleep techie had a chat to the other fellow and me, and since the other person was more used to sleeping earlier than me, he would be wired up and procedure'd before I would be, and that was fine. My blood pressure was measured, and I was told that he'd be back around 9:15pm or so to do the preliminary wiring. Then, after that, I would have some time before they came back to attach a nasal cannula, bands and a oxygen sensor just before I went to bed. Sounded good. I booted up my netbook and did some writing/editing of the entries for my New York Trip, and it wasn't long before Kevin came back to wire me up.

Two contact points on both left and right tibialis anterior. Four contact points across my chest for a ECG (duplicates apparently in case one or two of them came off). Two under the jaw, one behind each ear, one forehead, one on each side of my eyes, and then three pairs on my head. The way they were done for the head was a left and right, since they have to counter-check that the signals were correct, or something like that. There was a frontal, occipital, and something else. All of the plugs went into one box, which they tested was reading, before they disconnected it and hung it around my neck.

I then had some more time before going to bed, looking like something from a Frankenstein lab really lol. When it came to bed time for me I asked if I could first see what they monitored and he took me to the control room and showed me the system setup. Each person had two monitors running, one with a infra-red and regular light camera to monitor movements, while the other screen had the continuous tracking of all the signals. He explained to me the lines on the screen and how they were measured before we went back to the room. I mentioned that I normally breathed through my mouth and he had to get a different device to compensate for that, thermistor, he came back to place two bands around my torso, one across the waist with the other just under my armpit height. The bands work for 55 to 200kg people apparently. I was also apparently technically overweight according to the BMI, since for my height of 178cm, it was 79.5kg, and I weigh about 80-81kg. Hmm. Need to shed those extra kilos. The oxygen sensor clipped onto my pinkie finger and the wire taped onto my finger. A nasal cannula went on (felt super weird) and also the thermistor went in since it had two prongs for the nose, and an opposite sensor that stuck out over my mouth just by a little bit. They were adjusted and taped down.

I was then put under the sheets, and they had to test and calibrate. I was told to look at a single point at the ceiling with eyes open (instructions through intercom speakers), close my eyes, blink five times, look up/down, left/right. Then I was told to flex my left foot, right foot, roll over to the left and then roll over to the right. Finally, I was told to inhale and hold for ten seconds. Once that was done, Kevin came back in, asked if there was anything I needed or problems, told me that if I needed help, just call out and the microphone in the room would pick it up, or pull the oxygen sensor off my finger. He then turned out the lights and closed the door.

Inside, it was pitch black with the exception of a row of orange lights from the power board that ran the linkage units. I found it really strange to have all this stuff stuck on me and what not, and it took me a little bit to adjust. I turned a little here and there over the course of the night, and I don't know if I got much sleep at all. When they came in the morning just past 6am, I was actually already up, and they probably knew that from my signals. I did hear them next door, so they were probably waking the other fellow and processing him first. When it was my turn, they got me to sit up, and measured my blood pressure. It was 118/90, a little higher than what was measured before I went to bed, but within "normal" values. Then he sprayed warm water over my head to remove the attachments, before taking the rest off.

I had a little form to fill out, about how I slept and disturbances/comments on my sleep. It felt similar to how I would be at night, if not a little worse. I felt about the same level of tiredness really, and since getting to my office, I have yawned lol. I asked Kevin about how my sleep went.

He told me that for what he saw (because he wasn't looking at it all night), it was pretty uneventful. By uneventful, he meant that there was nothing strikingly significant to be seen. No glaring obvious apneas or restless legs syndrome, and my oxygen levels seemed fine. While he couldn't give any answers, he said that the data would need to be processed before anything could be said. He then did comment that it could be a possibility that I might have (wow, so much probability there lol) hypopnea since my breathing rate was quite low to what you would normally see, but once again, the ratio of the sleeping behaviours/breathing etc would need to be processed first. I then asked about REM sleep, and he told me, yes, actually, that was different also, I didn't show signs of REM until very late, about three to four in the morning. Going by that, if you consider that in a normal night of sleep, you get supposedly several cycles of REM sleep.... I only got one cycle starting at three/four in the morning, and I was awake at six,... I didn't exactly get that much of it. Hmm.

Well, I have my follow up appointment on the 17th June, at 9am with Dr Yee. All of the data hopefully will be processed, and ratios calculated and probably factors determined. I don't know if this means that my sleep problems are a psychological thing or not if the physical basis isn't a major problem or not. I do hope they find something that is fixable physically, since I know psychological issues are much harder and longer-time required to fix.

So that was that.

Oh, Jane, the receptionist originally told me that I would get "breakfast" in the morning, but this didn't appear to be the case. I was ushered out, leaving the building at 7:04am. I did have a shower after being de-wired because I had to wash off all the water soluble stick-on pads they had to attach everything onto my head. So, I walked back down Glebe Point Road to Broadway to buy some stuff for breakfast, and I think fate kind of showed me some kindness as on my way down the road, I found a $20 note on the ground, with no-one around. Not much could be done to find its owner so I pocketed it and used it for my breakfast.

So, now, I'm in my office, feeling per normally really, as if it was just another day. Lets just wait and see what comes from the study.