Figuring Out Why I’m Tired All The Time: Part I

No matter if it's early morning or late evening, when someone asks me how I'm doing my usual response is "Tired". It's become a common response, but I never realized how much truth was behind it. Until recently.

When you finally hit that point in a relationship where you're sharing a bed with someone, you start to realize all of the annoying stuff they do when they sleep. For instance, my wife likes to sleep in the dead center of our queen-sized bed even though we have lived together for over 5 years.

The annoying thing I do when sleeping? Talking. Sleep-walking (with some occasional sleep-eating). Points where I stop breathing. These were all things noticed by my wife, who is a Registered Nurse, and she urged me to go see a sleep doctor. It should be noted that this is a usual change of pace. This is the woman who tells me 90% of my medical complaints can be solved with ibuprofen.

So I finally got an appointment at the Deaconess Sleep Center, where it was recommended that I take part in a sleep study. I scheduled my sleep study for Super Bowl Sunday, because the Patriots were in and I really didn't care.

A sleep study is simple. You are wired up to electrodes which record brain and muscle activity throughout the night. You are also recorded on camera and they place a mic right on your neck to record any vocal sounds. In fact, wiring up for the test takes around 45 minutes.

So you have to sleep at least 5 hours and it's a strict lights-out policy at 10:30 PM. It should also be mentioned that if you have to get up in the middle of the night, you have to call someone to unhook you from the machine. Yes, it's exactly like that scene in The Matrix.

I felt like it was a pretty uncomfortable sleep, but I really have a hard time sleeping in strange places. It would be another two weeks before I get the results and I will talk more about that, and my eventual diagnosis in my blog next week.