August 07, 2008 Michael AugustineLisez en Francais
Please forgive the previous, and immediately following bad musical puns, but “...you’ll have to excuse me - I’m not at my best.” The Spirit of the West is always good for apt musical quotes. Plus, with them being a proudly Canadian band, it makes me feel slightly less guilty for raiding their cache of intellectual property for my own selfish purposes - slightly less guilty.
Once again I find myself up in the wee hours of the morning. I am starting to have serious issues with the job performance of Mr. Sandman, and may consider litigious action. To be quite fair, it was just barely thirty minutes past midnight when I woke up. Aside from roughly twenty minutes brief respite spent in my bathroom where I fell asleep sitting in my wheelchair with my head resting in my arms upon the vanity counter. I have been fully conscious since then.
Fully coherent? Now that’s another matter entirely and can be debated later, upon the conclusion of today’s, er... this morning’s...missive.
I’ve recently been going to a sleep clinic within the GTA (greater Toronto area), to better understand what is happening to me, and especially why it’s happening to me! A sleep clinic is essentially a diagnostic facility with little furnished suites, much like a hotel where you stay overnight while they monitor your nocturnal activities for signs of complications. The goal is to render diagnostic conclusions and, one hopes to offer solutions.
Now, I freely admit that I am not a medical expert. At best I might be considered a reasonably incompetent medical layman. However, I find it somewhat...disconcerting...that what a sleep clinic considers effective techniques to measure nighttime distress is to put you through a bedtime gauntlet that would make even Rip Van Winkle wake up and say “Dude, you have GOT to be kidding me?!?”
Allow me to elucidate the process for you: first, they begin by gluing, with wads of sticky wax and masking tape, roughly thirty electrodes over various parts of your body (I had over ten of them fastened to my scalp and face alone). All are connected via long, entangling filament wires to a large heavy box placed under your now very lumpy pillow. You are, hence, newly immobilized to a considerable degree.
Following this, they tape, with mummifying skill, a sensor to your index finger (thus now completely unable to bend), which itself is then connected to yet another monitor via a long heavy cord, further restricting your ability to turn over. Things proceed apace as they continue the preparations by strapping two large black belts firmly around your chest, then waist. As the process winds down, they are prompt to ensure your added comfort by politely informing you that, should you have need of anything, you merely have to signal them as there is both a microphone and infrared camera monitoring everything single thing you do or say, and they’ll be off somewhere hidden watching you...the entire time. The technician completes the process by turning off the lights and saying: “Sleep well.”
Well - I didn’t. Who saw that one coming? Raise your hands...
Apparently I did sleep just long enough for them to conclude that I have mild sleep apnea, which is a common sleep disturbance that causes very brief, but chronic cessations of breathing throughout the night. This is also, incidentally, the most common reason behind why people snore (although I myself am not generally known to do so - apparently it is not always a symptom). Needless to say, treatment is ongoing. I had a second appointment this past Saturday, which, believe me is even more entertaining a story then the previous one, and still a third meeting yet to come, which is scheduled for next week. I’ll be sure to update you on “Little Augy’s Adventures in Slumberland” as the comic progresses.
I think now I'll take a trip to the 24-hour grocery store behind my home and buy myself some roast turkey from the sandwich meat department. My hope is that a deli breakfast of toast, lettuce, tomato and trytophan will knock me out just like every good turkey meal should. Barring that, I will hop a bus in my disheveled pajamas and go next door to Toronto where I will proceed to wheel about the subways aimlessly and in a semi-lucid haze, creatively wasting time whilst waiting for sleep takes me in.
Oh, c'mon - it’s Toronto. I mean, really...who’d notice?
Irreverently yours,
Augy, who firmly believes that should I ever become famous and they write a book about my life, the humor and non-fiction categories will have to duke it out to see who’s more entitled to it.