Suffered through a sleep study

Around 12:45 this morning I told the sleep tech I didn't know if I would make it, might go home. I told her I felt like I was in a torture chamber. I was pleasant, was not bitchy, we were laughing...but I was serious.

There were three sleep-study rooms. The walls were so thin I could hear the TV in the other room, I heard the lady in the other room snoring and coughing, I heard the doors open and close and could hear the tech on the intercom in the room next to me... Every time I would think I MIGHT fall asleep the coughing would start in the next room. My heart graph is going to be interesting --- I know my heart raced every time something caught me as I was trying to get to sleep.

The top half of the wall next to the bed was a window with blinds. No blackout curtains. A full array of parking lot lights shining through the sides and slats. The room was barely dim. I finally took my light coat and wrapped it around my head like a turban, covering my eyes. I tried pillows, the thin blanket...

The lights in the room? Those great blue-light emitting bright-white curly bulbs and fluorescent in the ceiling. No way reading was going to help put me to sleep even though I brought my blue-blocking glasses. They are made for the computer, not for blocking around the edges of the lens.

The bed was horrible. It didn't elevate at all. One of the sleep study ladies left in the middle of the night because she couldn't sleep --- her back was hurting too much. She had to sleep sitting up as they didn't have a way to raise the mattress. I grabbed four pillows and made a kinda-sorta chair back and slept semi-sitting up.

The bathroom was down the hall. I heard everyone who went to the bathroom. To get to the bathroom I had to walk out into bright lights. Guess what that does to a brain? Wake up li'l brain, time to get up!

It's hard enough to sleep in a strange place with things stuck to your body...but add all those factors and it is impossible.

They had a TV in the room. Every sleep expert tells you to stay away from the TV if you're trying for quality sleep. Although --- the TV screen was slightly smaller than my laptop screen so binoculars were needed to see it. Not that I turned it on. I don't like watching TV. Period.

I showed up with comfy clothes, my pillow, my sound machine (truly thankful I brought it...not that it was louder than the coughing and opening/closing door noises), a book, my tablet, chargers, toothbrush and toothpaste for the morning, heartburn antacids (a last-minute toss in that I am glad I had given I couldn't sleep with the bed elevated), earbuds so I could listen to a binaural beat meditations (3 times before the night finally ended...), and I also brought a small cooler with water and my health smoothy.

The only reason I knew to bring all of that was because I did some research on-line to see what was allowed. I certainly didn't get any info from this group.

My Fitbit registered 47 minutes of sleep. Light sleep. I actually did get more sleep it's just that I confused my poor Fitbit with all the long times awake, getting up to go to the bathroom (when I'm awake the urge strikes...when I sleep well it doesn't). I managed to get the minimum required two hours of sleep. I think I might have gotten just over three hours.

I am prepared to be disappointed in the results when I go for the follow-up doc appointment.

I wanted to find out if my Fitbit was correct in showing that I didn't get but a minuscule amount of REM and deep sleep. I wanted someone who would help me increase those numbers.

I mentioned in a previous blog that they seemed to be pushing C-Pap machines when I had my initial appointment. I suppose most people go in to determine whether they have sleep apnea, snoring issues, or other physical issues that lead to poor sleep.

I use a snore app and know I don't snore much if any. I have yet to register on the app. I asked the sleep tech if I snored, she said no. Then she backtracked and said "well, I can't say"...'cause they're not allowed to say :-).

I do wake up anywhere from 2 to 4 each night and often can't get back to sleep. My normal bedtime is around 10. Last night I was in the sleep-study bed all hooked up with the door closed by around 10:15 pm. However, I tossed, turned, put pillows over my head, adjusted the bed, played games on my phone, listened to meditations to no avail, propped up the head of the bed, and I read for a bit with my phone light and blue-blocker glasses until 12:45. Sigh.

I finally forced myself to go to sleep.

I doubt I'll find out anything about my deep and REM sleep. How could they begin to know how much I might get based on 3-3 1/2 hours or so of disrupted sleep?

Add a bed and a wall of blinds and you'll know what I thought
of the sleep study and environments :-)

The place is part of a pulmonary practice. They have great reviews. I did some research before going, I just didn't know enough to do the right kind of research. I "assumed" that finding out about deep and REM sleep would be one of the priorities.

When they schedule your sleep around their schedule, end it at 5 a.m. whether you're ready to get up or not (I was already awake so it didn't bother me), when they don't know anything about great sleep environments, when they only need two hours of sleep to get results I don't think they are after anything other than selling those C-Paps!


I'll let you know how it goes when I go for the follow-up, get the results. I would really like to be proven wrong in thinking this was just a C-Pap pushing exercise...

Side note: This is my second sleep study. The other study was at least 15 years ago and it was great. Nothing at all like this experience.

Giving up milk...

A lot of people right now are swearing off meat. It will be temporary in most cases but a few will stick with it. They probably aren't thinking about milk and cheese though.

Recently the government recalled 143 MILLION pounds of beef as a result of a video by the Humane Society. The video showed cows staggering and being tortured as they headed to be slaughtered. You may have seen the video on TV. It's horrible to think that people could be that cruel.

What's worse is that the meat was headed toward our children's schools. A lot of the meat had been eaten prior to the recall.

What's all the hoopla about eating the meat? It's possible, although probably remote, that some of the cows had bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease. If a cow has it and you eat it, you have a high chance of someday having your brain turn to mush. From what I've read the brain ends up looking like a sponge. There is no cure.

I think the fact that the cows in question were DAIRY cows has mostly been overlooked. Prior to ending up on the chopping block these older cows spent their life squirting milk into containers that ended up in refrigerators across the country. Processing doesn't kill mad cow disease.

They've done experiments where the turned infected cow parts into dust at temperatures that kill everything, reconstituted the stuff and voila, you could still get mad cow. They haven't quite figured out how to make it go away. I read about one case where tools used in surgery where disinfected, heated, etc. then, after a lengthy period of time were used in eye surgery. The person contracted the disease from the equipment. You'll have to look it up 'cause I don't remember the particulars.

I don't eat meat. Haven't since I was a teenager. It started out as a teen-age protest of some sort, partially because I didn't want to kill and eat Bambi or some poor cow, partially I think because my parents enjoyed it so much. My personal stand for independence on some level probably. Whatever the initial reasons, over the years I've read enough about our food processing to convince me to stay on the straight and narrow in regards to meat. Now it's a habit and a way of life.

I don't like milk, so I've never been one to drink full glasses of the stuff unless it was drowned in chocolate or mixed with ice cream. However, as you can already tell, I eat dairy products. I keep it to a minimum and shoot for tofu or soy products whenever possible. But I do have a sweet tooth that only chocolate ice cream will satisfy at times, albeit sugar-free in most instances.

The fact that the cows in question were dairy cows opened my eyes yet again and I'm going back to soy, tofu and similar. The only time I drink milk anymore is in my hot tea, so that's not a problem. I have a yogurt a day, so am gonna have to switch back to non-dairy, again not a problem as I like it.

I've already cut cheese out of my diet. Not for mad cow reasons, but because I've been watching my hips widen and cheese is high in fat and calories. I can't stand the low-fat cheeses so it has just been easier to bump it from my diet.

Enough about what I'M going to be doing. What are YOU going to be doing? Have you wondered how long this plant has been supplying meat to our kids and fast-food restaurants? They recalled 143 million pounds of meat. How much meat has been processed by this plant during its history? How many other plants have similar practices? How many dairy cows are out there potentially pumping mad cow milk?

I seriously don't expect we have many, if any dairy cows with problems. From what I've read these cows were simply abused, tired cows. They were older dairy cows that were past their milk-producing prime and thus were headed to slaughter. They traveled a great distance, probably in conditions that had them standing packed into cattle cars for a long period of time. They were more than likely just wanting to sleep.

However, cows with BSE symptoms aren't noticeable until the cows are older. In the United States we kill our cows young, long before symptoms would be visible to the naked eye. We don't check them for the disease.

And here's another scary fact. If one BSE infected cow gets in the mix, it affects the entire batch of meat. Plus, since you can't kill it, they can sterilize and clean those killing machines and processors all they want but they can't get rid of the stuff. The next batch of meat going through the system is going to be tainted.

If you eat it, chances are someday your family will think you're suffering from dementia. But it will be mad cow. Read about it. It's not common, but it IS scary.
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