My sleep study

Ugh. I'm supposed to be studying for pharm right now (test on Tuesday), but instead I literally spent about an hour watching youtube videos. There's this one particular chick that posts tons of "how to" videos of doing herself over to look like celebrities. And she's good. Like, really good. I watched her do makeovers on herself for Michael Jackson, Beyonce, Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie, and Scarlett Johansson just to name a few. Anyway check her out. Click here for awesomeness, but be warned, you may find yourself surfing her channel for a while.

Anyway, this weekend Adam went back home to help his parents install a new pool after their old one died not long ago. I decided to stay in Birmingham because I needed to study (which I really have done, I promise), and I had a sleep study this weekend that had been scheduled for months. Thus I stayed.

So yeah, this sleep study. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I showed up there Thursday night at 8pm and they showed me to my room. It was pretty much like a hotel room.

 After I signed some papers and picked out my breakfast for the morning, they started hooking me up to all sorts of stuff.

Sorry the pictures are a little dark. These things included:

• EEG (electroencephalogram),
• EMG (electromyogram) on my face and legs to detect motion and movement from facial twitches/grinding and restless leg,
• EOG (electro-oculogram) to detect rapid eye movement,
• 2-lead EKG,
• Two elastic bands around my chest and abdomen to determine the depth/effort of my breaths,
• A nasal cannula (not for oxygen, but to make sure I was breathing; it also had a little piece that hung down onto my top lip and was probably the most annoying thing out of all of this),
• A snore microphone which was another electrode affixed to my neck, and
• A pulse oximeter (which was actually really painful on my finger).

Every electrode on my body had this vaseline jelly underneath it (including the ones in my hair!) so I felt and looked gross, hence the uncombed hair look in the pictures above. After I was tucked in bed with everything plugged in (I was required to go to sleep by 10pm), they had me practice breathing with a nasal CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure machine) incase during the night I stopped breathing. Apparently if that happened, they'd rush into the room and put this thing on me.

So this was pretty strange. When they turned the machine on, the positive pressure made it feel difficult to exhale through my nose. Inhalation was extremely easy, which I suppose is the point. But for a short moment I panicked. It felt almost as if I was being suffocated. I "practiced" breathing with this for about 10 minutes; the tech promised me there was nothing in there except for air. After a while I got used to breathing with this and everything was fine. But then when she came back in the room, she turned the machine off before taking it off my face. That was almost as panick-inducing as putting it on my face because it literally sucked my breath away for a second. 

That night I slept terribly, of course. I woke up at 7am (thanks to the technician) with a headache and just felt super tired. They took all the equipment off of me except for the EEG, EKG, EOG, and the EMG electrodes on my face. I was much more comfortable this way. My sleep study continued over into Friday. Every 1.5 hours I had to lay down for 30 minutes and try to sleep. If I was unable to, they'd get me back up after 30 minutes, and then an hour and a half later, I'd try again. Not to my surprise, I wasn't able to sleep at all Friday. But I did study! They finally released me at 2:30pm. I was SOOOO happy to be out of there, take a shower, and sleep in my own bed.

As soon as I was released, I called my sister-in-law (she and the kids were in town again this week) and went over to the pool at their hotel. We had also hung out on Thursday before I had to go into the dreaded sleep study, and it was really nice to do something fun before being admitted for the night. Anyway, I hung out at the pool with them for a little while before they went home for the weekend. Love those babes!

Friday night Lindsay came over and we had such a fun girls night!! We drank lots of wine (I needed it after the experience I had just had), ordered pizza and watched Legally Blonde while eating popcorn. We kept laughing at each other about how well we were able to quote the movie. I mean I'm not really surprised. I only watched it like 394023 times in high school. But it's still been a looong time since we'd seen it.

Saturday night we did the exact same thing all over again, except this time it was the sequel to Legally Blonde: Red, White, and Blonde! :) Had so much fun with her! Of course I missed my Adam, but it was nice to just have a girls weekend.

Anyway, that catches me up to now. I've officially pushed studying off for another hour, so I really must get started now. Till next time. :)

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