To sleep, perchance to get a migraine and watch M*A*S*H all night long

It began with people laughing at me and ended in tears, as only a night at the hospital for me can.

Last night I had a sleep study. This means people studied my sleep at a sleep clinic in the local place of round-the-clock medical care. I didn't expect to sleep much or well, but I did expect to do better than this.

Let's start in the parking lot. ("If I had a dollar!" you're saying. You trollop) The prep sheet recommended bringing your own pillow, because even it knows how crappy hospital pillows are. I use three during the night, and three very specific ones, because I have spent too many years dealing with headaches and neck pain and anyone else who has knows that this means you have to have very specific pillows in order to not wake up in pain every day. So I stuffed two into a small suitcase and put the third into a giant Ziploc bag.

As I headed for the hospital entrance, I noticed a couple also making their way, behind me, in the same direction. Outside the hospital it's really quite beautiful, I must note; you cross a really pretty creek and pass lots of trees and these round, purple flowers atop tall stems that look like fountains in '70s malls. Also lilacs.

Somewhere around there I heard the people behind me laughing and then this pointed throat-clearing. I had a feeling they were noticing my luggage and remarking that I must be going to the sleep clinic. I turned and looked at them and knew, with my great big giant brain, that something like this was indeed what they were saying.

Also they might have been laughing at the bepenguined winter scene on the pillow in the Ziploc bag.

This made me happy that I might thusly amuse others. YES! PENGUIN! Now I must go sleep on this penguin. You wish you had one too! Kisses!

I checked in at admissions and proceeded to the sleep center. Diane was the sleep technician who would be watching over me through the night in a not-at-all-freaky way. Actually she was really cool and made me feel quite at ease. I warned her that I would likely be going to the bathroom a lot, especially since my kidneys react to urinary obstacles by kicking it up to 11. When people tell her they've had to go for hours but didn't want to bother her, though, she always tells them she wishes they had called. She would much rather they were sleeping. So I told her I would, in that "OK, you asked for it" way where your voice rises in hills throughout the sentence.

It took about half an hour to hook me up to all the wires. I peed and got into bed to read. My face was tensing up quite painfully in reaction to the things stuck to it. One of the few times in my life when I was able to note the difference between head pain and an actual headache. This pain went through regular cycles during which I thought "OH thank God, I'm OK," and then shortly thereafter was cursing the heavens. And it made me drink a lot of water.

You're a smart cookie. You know where that's going.

Once I was too tired to read about Harry's new Firebolt anymore, I tried relaxation stuff on my iPod, and when that was going nowhere, M*A*S*H on my wee DVD player.

Nothing. The pain was keeping me awake, as was the kidney-bladder dynamic duo (trio) that is never so happy as when we're in a situation where it's a difficulty to pee. "Ha, a CHALLENGE!" bladder says (in a British accent, don't ask me why). "Kidneys! Churn out the yellow like you've never churned before!"

When I had to go to the bathroom or needed anything at all, I just said Diane's name, and she came padding along. The intercom was set one way so she could hear me. At one point I said her name and the door opened and it was a young man in scrubs. "You're a METAMORPH!? AWESOME!!" I hollered.

No, I didn't. And no, she wasn't. Although I never did see them both at the same time ...

As I feared, head-pain did evolve into head-ache. Next time I called Diane, Man came again (1 a.m., he told me it was). I asked if there was any reason I couldn't take Aleve. Nope, he said. I stumbled over to grab my purse and dug through it in the bathroom. I knew from past assessments that there should be two Aleve in there. Thank GOD there were. I was an unhappy mess at this point, unhappily triply messy for all the things attached to me making me oh so pretty. "I really don't look like this," I wanted to tell Man and wave my hand before myself so that he'd see the prettiest me ever.

(I wasn't after him or anything. Just didn't want anyone seeing me like that. Not him, not Diane, not God in His Heaven.)

"What's this 'sleep'? It rhymes with
'weep'; THAT I can do."

Aleve kicked in fast. Sleep still didn't. When all was said and done, I slept in a few like 20-minute batches. (Diane said 2-3 hours total.) I also watched several M*A*S*H episodes multiple times. I probably went to the bathroom 7 or 8 times. They wake you up at 5:30 to leave, because by then the techs have been there like 10 hours and need to go home to sleep themselves. When Diane was pulling the wires off me, she recommended I take the day off if I could.

I stopped at work to grab stuff to do at home, got an egg sammich at CTB and came home, to the confusion of five fuzzy quadrupeds. As I got water out of the Brita, Fathom peeked around the counter corner at me and told me in no uncertain terms that I was to be HERE with THEM during THE DARKNESS. At 8 I got back in bed with NPR and zonked out.

I'll find out Monday whether they were able to learn anything or not. If not, I shall not rest until I have killed Lord Voldemort! No, Ron, I will not stop saying his name!