So, I Just Had a Sleep Study Done

Thursday night, I left work and headed south to Pinehurst to stay the night. The reason? My family doctor had referred me to a neurologist about some items of concern related to my sleeping habits (snoring among them). Dr. Chin, a neurologist specializing in sleep disorders, ordered a sleep study, so there I was!

My appointment gave a real short time period to report to the study facility… I could not get there before 8:45 PM and had to be there before 9:00 PM. So, not knowing the area, I actually arrived at 8:00 PM and had to sit out in the parking lot and wait. But that is not the purpose of this post… it is to share my experience with the study with my readers who may have to go through the same thing.

When I got inside the clinic, I was shown my bedroom, and the technician said he would be in shortly to discuss the study with me. At a little after 9:00, he came in and handed me a small questionnaire that basically had me rate my normal sleeping patterns, and discuss when I normally went to bed, when I normally got up, and how many times I awoke during the night.

Since my normal bed time is midnight or later, he asked if it would be OK to prepare his other patient first, and allow her to get to bed earlier. I, of course had no problem with that. He did warn me that it was about one hour to prep a patient, so that would get me to bed around 11:30… again, no problem, except I did not have a computer to use in the meantime .

True to his word, the Tech came in again about an hour later, after having me get ready for bed by putting my pajamas on. He laid out numerous wires and probes (no, nothing that would hurt), then explained what they were all for. There was a 12 wire harness first, then several single wire devices to monitor various areas.

four wires monitored my lower leg movements by being attached to my calves. four more were for brain wave activity. Four monitored eye movement. Two were to monitor my heart beat and one more to monitor oxygen level. A microphone to monitor the snoring, two belts to monitor breathing movements. And lastly two probes to monitor jaw movement. The process, as discussed, took about an hour. The Technician was very informative as he was doing all the connections, and answered all the questions I had.

After hooking me all up, he went into the control booth area and ran me through some movements to test them out. I was asked to lay on my side, move my feet, breathe deeply move my stomach muscles, and fake snoring. When the testing was over, I was allowed to sleep normally. I say normally, but I was always aware of the wires, and actually had concerns that I may rip them out during my sleep, so that, along with sleeping in a strange place with its strange noise, I am sure affected my normal sleep patterns.

I remember waking during the night, but not any more than usual. The Tech woke me up at 5:45 am to conclude the test. I had to go through the same test sequence as the night before, then he came in to disconnect me. This process was definitely shorter than the attachment, so I was done at around six.

I tried to get a feel for how the test went, but the tech was pretty closed lipped about it, saying the doctor had to interpret all the charts first. So, I do not know how badly I snored that night, or whether I stopped breathing, indicating sleep apnea. I guess I will find all that out on the 24th when I talk to Dr Chin again. In the mean time, I still have an MRI and an EMG test to go through.

I will let you know the results when I get them. In the meantime, as you can see, the sleep study was completely painless, and only a minor inconvenience as far as lost sleep goes. I hope this encourages those of you that may face this study to not worry about it. It may just be the first step to curing your snoring and sleep apnea.

Until next time,
sleep well!

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