So, I’m sitting in the clinic where I had my sleep test, waiting to see the doctor to confirm the results. As I look around me, I see a lot of the names of the doctors are Russian, and that signs on the walls include a lot of Cyrillic characters. This just confirmed for me an old piece of folk wisdom: you’re never really aware of how many Russians live in your neighbourhood until you go to a sleep clinic.
One of the posters that caught my eye claimed that high waist size was tied to low testosterone levels in men. Nudge nudge, wink wink. And, I thought: THIS is what you want me to be thinking about while I wait for test results?! Please, say no more!
The doctor confirmed that I have sleep apnea. This is how it works: my throat is a lazy bastard. When my brain signals that it’s time for everything to slow down in preparation for sleep, my throat says, “I’m outta here. Anybody wants me, I’ll be watching Real Wives of Windsor.” Minutes later, my lungs start shouting, “Hey! What happened to all the oxygen? Sleeping body still needs oxygen. Hello! Is anybody listening?! Not happy, here!” Eventually, the shouting of my lungs wakes up my brain, which kicks my throat in the trachea and tells it to widen so that my lungs can get the oxygen they need. Grumbling, my throat obeys the demands of my brain…until it falls asleep again, at which point my throat goes back to watching its programme.
According to the sleep researchers, this was happening to me 30 times an hour.
Also according to the sleep researchers, the solution was something called a C-PAP machine. C-PAP stands for Crazy…Psionic, Uhh, Aphnea – okay, I don’t have a clue. This is how that works, though: it tells my throat to stop being a lazy bastard, and, when my throat laughs at it without even looking up from the TV screen andd essentially says, “You’re not the boss of me!”, it sends a steady stream of air from my mouth to my lungs. This keeps my throat open, which allows my brain to get the deeper sleep it needs for me to feel refreshed and alert. (To my knowledge, the machine doesn’t gloat, although goodness knows my throat would deserve such treatment!)
This is me using a C-PAP machine: I look like Bane and sound like Darth Vader. Just one more indignity in my quest for immortality.
After I started using the C-PAP machine, I was asked back to the clinic for another sleep test. I thought the second night was to determine whether or not the C-PAP machine was helping. I had felt better soon after I started using it, but that’s merely anecdotal evidence – I needed to be retested for my improved feelings to be SCIENTIFIC. As it happened, I was wrong. The doctors knew the C-PAP machine would work – smug bastards. The second sleep test was to determine how much air needed to be shoved down my throat for me to get the maximum benefit.
Oh, joy. Oh, bliss.
The second time I spent a night at the sleep clinic, my nurse was a woman. If I had known that that would be the case, I would have worn my good underwear!* She hooked me up while I was sitting in a chair facing the wall (not on the bed, as the man had the first time); I felt like I was being punished. Jewish guilt is a terrible thing that sneaks up on you in the most unlikely situations! It didn’t help that she made a point of pointedly pointing out the camera that would help monitor my sleep, although, admittedly, I would have been more concerned about my privacy if I hadn’t been keenly aware that I would be writing about the experience!
This time, the nurse insisted I lay on my side, which made it all but impossible for me to fall asleep. When I finally seemed able to nod off, she came in saying she had to adjust the equipment because the mask appeared to leak too much leakage. More joy. More bliss.
As it happened, I didn’t sleep long enough for the second test to have any meaningful results. However, tinkering with the C-PAP machine over the next few weeks did reveal the optimum air pressure, and now I can look forward to sleeping with the C-PAP machine for the rest of my days. Man, if I had a sex life, this would undoubtedly be an inhibiting factor for it.
Enough with the joy, already! Enough with the bliss!
* It’s a joke. All my underwear is good underwear.**
** In any case, no underwear was revealed in the course of the evening. It wasn’t that kind of test.