I feel pretty, oh so pretty…

Here’s me, all wired up for my sleep study. Actually, I had just woken up and am waiting to be disconnected by my sleep tech, Natasha.

The past week I’ve been boring everyone who’ll listen about my sleep study. My enthusiasm is certainly partly due to the idea that I might get a restful night’s sleep on a consistent basis, but also I have a certain fascination with medical procedures. I imagine this is mostly due to pouring over my mother’s critical care nursing magazines since the age of five, marveling at the glossy color photos of open-heart surgery, brain scans and the like. I found it all fascinating and it helped form a certain base of what I find aesthetically pleasing. I had actually flirted with the idea of being a medical illustrator, but I didn’t, and so here I am.

Anyway. I haven’t slept well for the past several years, which has caused a couple of my doctors to be concerned. And when I found out recently from Kip that I don’t really snore much but have these weird hitches in my breathing, I was promptly referred to a sleep disorder clinic.

With my inherited deformed nasal septum plus several common symptoms, my sleep doctor strongly suspected sleep apnea and so I was scheduled for a split sleep study; first part a straight observation of my sleep habits, the second being a fitting and adjusting of a CPAP machine. To my slight disappointment, that second part didn’t happen. I didn’t meet the criteria of 30 or more sleep apnea episodes per hour.

Whereas I do definitely have sleep apnea, more significantly I suffer from hypopnea, meaning my air passages only close part way. Not significant event in itself, except this continues during my sleep for several hours straight only to be interrupted with apnea episodes–apparently highly unusual and the first case my doctor has dealt with (go me). As far as my doctor is concerned, I have severe sleep apnea/hypopnea, but he and a a sleep analysis have to go over the sleep vitals captured last night to satisfy my insurance company. And I have to go back next week for the fitting of my oh-so-very-sexy CPAP machine.

I consider this all as another step on the road to becoming a frumpy middle-aged English lady who gardens, keeps cats and solves the odd mystery. And perhaps cause a scandal or two–after all, what I prefer to grow in my garden are opium poppies, foxglove and “herbs.”

On a related side note, I enjoyed the irony of seeing a report of how a Cornish man claims new sleepless record on the BBC homepage this morning.