Sleep

This column was supposed to be about spending a night in a sleep laboratory, something that I imagine most readers will not have experienced. Unfortunately, the reality is somewhat different from the dream.

I had an appointment for the sleep clinic in downtown Jerusalem. I arrived about an hour before my appointment, as I had expected traffic jams and there were none, so I saw the doctor well before the appointed time. Upon registration, I had to fill in two questionnaires about my sleeping habits (especially how they affected me during the day), and both showed that I have some form of sleep problem.

It seemed that the doctor didn't look at the questionnaires at all and neither at my referrals. He did not examine me, and only asked a few standard questions (do I feel sleepy during the day? Yes! Are you healthy? At the moment I have anaemia) before asking the surprising question "Do you want to spend a night here doing the sleep test or would you rather do it at home?".

As I (and apparently everyone else in my position) has remarked on the seeming impossibility of sleeping well in a sleep laboratory, I instantly opted to do the test at home. So I was shown to a technician who showed me the portable machine. Unlike the one which I saw on the Internet (I can't find the same picture again, as I'm writing this on a different machine) which had maybe eleven leads connected to the patient, my portable machine had only the following:

1. a contact mike just below the throat which records snoring
2. a position monitor, below the mike, which records in which position the patient is lying
3. a detector on the third finger which measures oxygen saturation of the blood
4. a big detector on the index finger which measures pulse, sleep status etc
5. the brains, a small box, which was taped to the left forearm

I stayed up late (11:20pm) on Thursday, which in retrospect may not have been a good idea. I watched Maccabi basketball luckily eke out an away win, during which I had often felt tired, but not tense regarding the outcome. Once I had connected the machine, I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep. Normally this happens within 20 minutes, but this time I just laid and laid, conscious of the weight on my forearm and the pinching of my index finger, waiting for the kiss of sleep.

I looked at the clock and saw that it was about 01:30am. I imagine that I must have slept an hour but it didn't feel like that. I got up, went to the toilet then came back to bed ... laid there for another fruitless hour ... finally fell asleep until 05:00am. This time I realised that there was no point in trying to fall asleep again, so after about half an hour I removed all the detectors.

I have to return the machine on Sunday morning, upon which the technicians will remove the recording in order to diagnose my problems. There was another questionnaire to be completed after the test, which included such key questions as "how many hours do you think you slept?" and "how well did you sleep compared to normal? (much better, better, the same, worse, much worse). I ticked "much worse" and have a suspicion that I will have to do the test again, maybe this time in the clinic itself (I saw the "bedrooms" there), as I don't think that the amount of sleep which I achieved will be sufficient for diagnosis.

A better idea would have been to have worn the equipment for one night without turning it on so that I would have got used to the weight and feeling, and then operate it on a second night. I will suggest this.

As a result of my poor sleep, Friday was exceedingly difficult, being very tired. I had to do some detailed programming and found myself making small mistakes all the time so forced myself to stop.

And now for something completely different ...

I have written here that I help a clinical psychologist. It turns out that I misunderstood the meaning of the term; she is not a clinical psychologist but rather an occupational therapist, someone who helps people find the correct job, or helps communal settlements weed their applicants, choosing only the people whose profile matches the ones desired by the settlements. I try not to interfere with the application of the results obtained from the various tests in order to keep a certain amount of distance. Obviously I do see people's test results, but they don't mean anything to me; I only look at them in order to make sure that my programs do what they're supposed to do, and to suggest better ways of displaying the results.