"Too Wired To Retire"

Would you rather toss and turn in a sleep clinic or the comfort of your own bed?

Philip Quinn, National Post
Published: Friday, April 24, 2009


I'm in a dormitory-style room at Toronto's Sleep and Alertness Clinic and I can't fall asleep. More than seven million Canadians are regularly in the same sleepless predicament - thankfully, not in the same room.

I am caught in a web of electrodes and wires, and if I don't fall asleep, my discomfort will go for nothing.

My family doctor had referred me to the downtown Toronto sleep clinic following my complaint of continually waking up tired. I wondered if I was suffering from apnea, a condition where one actually stops breathing during sleep for 10 seconds or more. So here I am wired into a device called Sandman, my sleep patterns to be recorded and later analyzed.

Except I'm fully awake; Julie the technician had hooked up the multi-coloured wires and electrodes just before midnight, past my usual hour of going to bed. It's thrown me off. I'm wired in the other sense of the word, my blood pressure spiking well above normal.

Electrodes are attached to monitor leg and hand movement and on the chest for the heart rate. The ultimate coiffure of wires - pinned to the head to record brain waves, especially REM (Rapid Eye Movement), which is dreaming sleep.

As I lie there on the bed, Julie uses the intercom and takes me on a test drive of the new ‘wired me,' asking me to move my feet, eyes (left to right), take deep breaths and fake snore. Finally the lights are shut off and I wait, and wait, and wait to drift off into sleep.

At some point I do find that elusive place but I wake up around five, needing to use the washroom. I'm unattached from the equipment, then re-attached but I can't fall back to sleep. At 7 a.m., Julie's voice comes over the intercom and tells me to get up. The lights come on and she enters the room, unhooks me from the wires, tells me to wash up, dress and fill out a form.

My problem falling asleep in the sleep clinic is not that unusual explains clinic doctor Joseph Barbera, with whom I meet six weeks later to go over the results.

"You had 4.9 hours of sleep," says Dr. Barbera. "It took you 42 minutes to fall asleep. You were up 94 minutes during the night. It was a broken up sleep. Not great. You slept 75.7% of the night."

As well, I stopped breathing, showing a "mild" apnea.

"You stopped breathing in your sleep or your breathing became shallow six times per hour, which is fairly mild. Five per hour is considered normal. Thirty or more (stoppages) is severe."

Dr. Barbera, who's written a paper titled "Sleep and Dreaming in Greek and Roman Philosophy," had both good and bad news for me.

"The good news is that your apnea is pretty mild. The bad news is concerning how to treat it. Some people with mild apnea feel much better (following treatment), others don't. When it's this mild, how much you want to treat it depends on how tired you are during the day."

I feel tired at times during the day but not to the point where I'm nodding off during conversations or while driving. I was definitely in a grey zone.

Apnea results from the upper airway narrowing as muscles relax during sleep. Dr. Barbera's treatment suggestions range from a body pillow to keep me from sleeping on my back to using CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, a combination mask and tube that relies on pressurized room air to help keep the airway open.

Surgery to remove part of the soft palate is also a possibility. There's also a dental mould of the upper and lower teeth which forces the jaw forward and again helps prevent the airway from narrowing.

None of these options are particularly appealing and because my apnea is mild, Dr. Barbera suggests something else.

"I think your main problem is that you're just not getting enough sleep. You have what we call a psycho-physiologic insomnia, which is a fancy term for lying in bed forcing yourself to try to sleep, which makes things even worse. In that case medication might help. I usually prescribe Imovane, which you'd take every night for two months then come back here for a follow-up visit."

Though not keen on it, I decide to go for the pill fix as a potential short-term solution. As I lie in my own bed, I remember great sleeps and great dreams I have had. Unfortunately, these memories only remind me that I'm still awake.

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wasn't joeseph barbera part of the hanna-barbera team that gave us the flintstones and countless other cartoons?

Is it too hard to believe that he retired from making people laugh and tried his hand at putting them to sleep?

Why do you think Bugs Bunny always said "What's up Doc?"