Fear the Crab

On the heels of my visit to the doctor for my suspected sleep apnea, I had to attend a mandatory “sleep class” at the hospital. My attendance had to be documented in order to proceed to the actual study, so that I assume the hospital can aver with reasonable confidence that I know what I’m getting into.

For a class, there wasn’t much to learn, nothing that I didn’t already know from my own internet research. I already knew how sleep apnea was caused, that any number of people can be affected by it regardless of their overall health and physique, and that a number of its symptoms can lead to very serious health risks. The class was scheduled for an hour and half, but the actual presentation only took 30 minutes; the rest of the time was for general questions or one-on-one conversations with the physician who gave the lecture.

In a way it was good that the class was so short. With a two-hour window between the end of my work day and the start of that class, I thought I could go home to freshen up and eat dinner. It turned out that traffic that day was Horrendous, so bad that I was forced to detour off my commute so that I could be at the hospital on time.

Since I qualified for a sleep study, I scheduled my appointment for the evening of June 1, which is a day after my little vacation (though I technically do attend work that day). I plan to take the next day off from work, just so I don’t have to rush around in order to be in on time.

When I think back on it, though, there are a couple of things I learned at that class. I discovered what the study will monitor as far as my vitals, such as brain waves, oxygen intake, blood pressure, and anything else they deem important enough to hook up electrodes and other gizmos to my body. I also learned that this granularity of data will be evaluated in 30-second increments, in order to give me the results with some level of accuracy. And if I do stop breathing during the study, the tech is going to wake me up and strap a CPAP machine to my head; likely to see what happens to me with it on.