St Luke’s South Sleep Lab

So, I’ve been working on some things lately and one of those paths led to a sleep study. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Yes, I would be sleeping in a place where someone would be watching. Yes, I would be all wired up. But, you really don’t know what it’s like until you get there.
I checked in at 8pm with someone who happened to be an old acquaintance and while she asked me all the normal intake questions we caught up a bit about her family and kids. My technician then came down to get me and took me to my room. She left me in my (really large) room to watch some college football while she saw to the other patients (to get them ready). It helped to get me relaxed and I changed into my sleep clothes and tried to get myself ready to go to sleep much much earlier than I normally do.
When she came in to «wire me up» I had no idea it was going to take 30 minutes and would involve a cold sticky goo that would help keep all of the electrodes and leads stuck on me and monitoring all my brain waves, etc. She was totally pleasant (and a fellow food lover) so we kept busy until I found out I had just joined the Borg Collective. I looked like a damned android.
She turned off the lights and I tried to get comfortable. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the red light of the eye in the sky. Suddenly, I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t get comfortable. My body rebelled too. It decided it needed to go to the bathroom. Embarrassed, I hit the intercom and asked her to unplug me from the monitor. She said, «No problem!» cheerily and was there a few seconds later to unplug me.
Business attended to, I tried to settle in again. Nope. For 20 minutes I tried to resist the urge to yet again go to the bathroom. I gave up and hit the intercom. «Maybe you’re just nervous about the observation. Just be patient with yourself and maybe walk around a bit.» After she unplugged me I walked around again. A few minutes of just trying to relax and shake out whatever nervousness I had clearly worked because I was down about 5 minutes after I laid down the final time.
She came in around 6am (I estimated that I fell asleep around 11pm) and unplugged me. I went home and caught a few more Zzzzzs before work.
I’ll get the results of the study in 2 weeks. Even though I haven’t seen the results yet I think it was really worthwhile to do, despite some of my difficulties. And the staff at St. Luke’s were great.