The hardest part of all of these appoitments was my sleep study. Not because it was hard but because I worked my self up and got really, really nervous about it all. Honestly looking back at it, it really wasn't that bad.
Before going in for the actual sleep study I had an appointment with the doctor in the same office where the sleep study would be held. The Doctor was super nice and everyone at the office was great questions from how I sleep to basic medical history type things.
The Doctor asked me so many questions about all of those things and from there I scheduled my sleep study.
& the next wait was on 3 weeks waiting for the actual sleep study.
It was scheduled for January 9th and I had to arrive at 7:30pm, so typically I got there early. Luckily my room and all my stuff was ready. I didn't take too much with me other than my nalgeene. I wore sweatpants and a tshirt to be comfy, you can take your pj's and change there but I figured it would be easier to just wear them so I was ready.
I got into my room. Which you can see below.
I was able to kind of just hang out and text and wait. Then the tech came in and kind of explained everything that was going to happen and what would be hooked to me and how the whole process would work. The tech was really understanding and said most people are nervous about the process so that's really normal.
He explained that all of these wires would be hooked to me in different spots including 10 leads on my head, two leads right below my knees, some on my chest. A lot of wires to go to bed with.
In this post I'll show you a lot of pictures so that if you have to go through a sleep study you can feel less stressed about the whole process!! If you have any questions about my sleep study, how it went, what it was like, please feel free to email me or comment below!!
Alright so when the tech started attaching all of the wires to me, he legit explained what every one would do as well as what it would show on the monitors. So the first two leads went down my shirt, and my sweatpants and hooked below my knees. These leads would show any movement within my legs as well as anything like restless leg syndrome and things like that.
I had 9 leads attached my my head, monitoring brain function, dreams all that good stuff.
Then the one around my chest monitored breathing and my chest rising or falling. I also had something extremely similar around my stomach to measure deep breathing or stomach breathing.
This machine is what all of the wires were plugged into, I couldn't go anywhere in the room without it.
The wires were pretty long so I could move around when in bed. It all looks like scary like you have to go to bed with all those wires attached to you, but they all get connected together kind of like this wire ponytail that I joked about and its wasn't too bad.
Okay so with all this stuff on I wondered how in the world would I be able to sleep. But beleive it or not, I got into bed around 11, we did a few tests- as there are intercoms in the room to be able to talk to the tech, as well as for the tech to be able to talk to you. So he ran a few tests asking me to do some breathing making sure all the monitors were working correctly as well as the sensors that were connected through the leads.
The tech had to come in to adjust one thing and then I turned the TV off and did some deep breathing and counting to help myself fall asleep. Because I started to worry and freak out a little bit.
Overall I slept from around 11:30-5:45am when the tech came in to wake me up. I was surprised that it was morning when the tech came to wake me up.
It took about 5-8minutes for the tech to get all the wires off me and then they just asked that I be out of the room by 6:45am. There was a shower and what not in the bathroom so I could get ready for work. But I opted to just head home and get ready to head to work.
I had about an hour and a half when I got home from work and I was exhausted. I felt exhausted the whole next day. So although I slept I don't really think that I got a "normal" night sleep.
I will find out the results on 1/25/18 and after that I will write an update to the blog post- Called Sleep Study Results so that you can see what they found during my sleep study!
Again if you have to have a sleep study and are nervous and what to talk to someone about it or have any questions please feel free to contact me!