You would think that people designing a sleep lab would want to provide a setting that would promote actual sleep, wouldn't you? Especially since they need you to sleep in order to get enough data to make a diagnosis, prescribe the right machine, prescribe the right settings (or at least initial settings). How are they going to do that if they are offering facilities that are inadequate?
My experience was awful, both at the initial sleep study and at the follow-up titration. They were done at the same place. There was no video to watch beforehand, although a year later I have visited their website and there is a general video about the process of going in, meeting the sleep tech, getting a few wires attached to your head (lol... the rest are not mentioned), and having a wonderful restful sleep, being given a granola bar and a juice drink in the morning, and going merrily on your way, all refreshed! That was not what happened to me. (well yes I did get the juice box and granola bar)
First, the bed was hard as a rock. Yet they suggested that I should try different sleeping positions. Let me tell you, I HAD to sleep on my back, because sleeping on my side would have been excruciating to the hip bones. Second, this particular lab uses beds that are weird. There is a wide headboard in which the double bed sits sideways. So the long side fits into the headboard, with the pillow end exposed at one end. Not only do you feel exposed by being watched all night by those cameras overhead, but you physically feel exposed because your head is not where it should be, at the headboard, but at one end, with nothing there.
Linky:
http://www.sleeplab.ca/facility/bedroom-newest.jpg
Third, on top of that, they tell you that the facility is like a hotel room. I seriously beg to differ. I don't share a bathroom in a hotel with three other bedrooms. It was out in the hall. And the hallway is lit at all times, so if the tech opens the door to your room, which she did frequently, the light streams in, waking you if you weren't already awake.
Fouth, they said there was even a tv, very comfortable. Uh, there was a medical style waiting room with a bathroom at one end, and a hallway with three bedrooms off of it. The tv was in the waiting room. If you wanted to watch it, you had to go out there in your pj's, all wired up, and sit in a hard hospital style chair and look up at the tv near the ceiling, and keep the volume low in case of disturbing anyone. This between 8:30 and 10:30 pm. It's so awkward and public that you just don't bother. You'd rather sit in your dorm room with a book and wait for them to tell you it's time for lights out.
Fifth, they say lights out at 10:30 pm forgodsakes! They want you to fall asleep before any reasonable adult would normally fall asleep. And all this while they are looking at you, while you are wired up the ying-yang.
Sixth, IF you have managed to take this ridiculous situation under your belt, and actually DO feel tired at this point in the night, once the lights are out, they start talking to you via a speaker in the wall for oh about a half hour, asking you questions, having you move this leg or that foot so they can check the electrodes to see if they're working right. By the time they're done, you are pretty much wide awake again.
Seven, so now you are supposedly settled in to your hard-as-a-rock bed, after not being able to watch the news, or get lulled to sleep by any of your normal activities, you close your eyes knowing they are looking at you, try to forget that you have itchy, gooey spots all over you and that you have a multitude of wires spidering off of you, with a thing clamped on your finger hurting like hell ... and you try to sleep. At the first sleep study, you are tired, overtired ... so even with all this stuff hooked to you, you take a while ... a looong while to get to sleep, but before you realize it, you DO drop off. Against all odds. Well I did. Guess I was hugely sleep deprived. Then an hour and a half later, the tech rushes in and wakes me from sleep. Needs to put a mask on me ... and hook me up to cpap. We have criteria for this .. when a patient has severe apnea, we need to put them on a mask right away and not wait. HUH??? I do? She straps the mask on me, a nasal mask. Cranks it down, sets the pressure on, and says go back to sleep. YEAH RIGHT! That wasn't going to happen. That damn mask hurt like the blazes. All I could hear was Darth Vader sounds and the bottom of the mask painfully pressing against my upper lip. I lay there trying to get back to sleep for hours, thinking over and over "I have severe sleep apnea !!! ". Finally, sometime around 4 or 4:30 am, I must have drifted off, because I woke up at 6 am all groggy and discombobulated. I was informed that they got enough info and told I could go home.
Eight, at the follow-up titration, same thing happened, very little sleep. A different room, same damn hard bed and weird headboard set-up. And this is in a private clinic, not a hospital. Same routine as before, but with my own mask on. But I knew they were watching me. And all those frickin wires, and electrodes. And that hard bed. Well I tried valiantly to get to sleep. I could not. Hours passed. Every so often the tech would come in and see if there was anything she could do. Yeah she could find me a better mattress!! I THINK I managed to get to sleep around 3 or 4 am. So they maybe got a couple of hours to titrate me. Whoopee.
On both mornings after, I managed to drive home in a zombie-like state, and sleep the morning away to catch up. There should be a governing board for designing patient-friendly sleep clinics. It would be in their best interest.
