As promised.....

Here's the down-low on Julia's Sleep Study experience:

I presented myself at 8pm as requested at the Sleep Clinic, and was whisked away to be settled in to my room, which was far nicer than I had expected. I had a recliner, a sink, and big flatscreen TV.

After a discussion with my technician and changing into my jammies, he spent an hour attaching all these wires to somewhere on ME.

Plus a few more not seen in the above photo. The ones that were attached to my head (seemed like a dozen or so. Seriously.) were attached with blobs of what was described as a water soluble adhesive. The removal of which proved to be the biggest challenge of the whole test.

I slugged down my normal night time medications plus a prescription sleeping pill, and gingerly made my way into bed.

Awkward.

Took me two hours to get to sleep even with the pill, but once I was out, I was sure I slept soundly. The tech informed me that actually I didn't. Instead my sleep was consistently interrupted with periods of apnea -- enough times that I now officially had a sleep apnea diagnosis. He told me this at 2 AM, after which the testing of various types of sleep apnea machines and masks began. At 6 AM after making a feeble attempt to wash off all that goo on my head, I stuffed my pillow and travel bag into Goldie and headed home.

Having never had a sleeping pill before, I'm not certain if the grogginess that lasted for the entire day after taking it was an expected side effect, but dang. I felt as though I had quite the hangover.

The final summary and report of the test along with treatment recommendations will be along in a few weeks.

So there you have it. I'm happy to report that all those kind folks to wrote to me sharing their very supportive experiences with sleep studies were absolutely right. It WAS a piece of cake. A very weird cake, but interesting and informative nonetheless.

Yawn. I think I need an uninterrupted night of sleep tonight. See y'all tomorrow.