Remember again how I discussed inheriting things from your parents – bad things? (It keeps coming back to this, doesn’t it?) One example might be excessive daytime sleepiness. I can fall asleep anywhere at any time – that’s why Carrie drives on long trips (don’t tell my life insurance company… we renewing our term right now!).

That reminds me of a story… Once we were on a trip with the in-laws and everyone was so tired that they foolishly turned the wheel over to me. Ten minutes later, everyone but me was asleep, but I was still holding on, trying to shock my brain into full wakefulness by visualizing the carnage that would happen if I just nodded off for a second. Five minutes later, Carrie’s dad woke up and yelled at me to pull my head back inside the car and roll the window back up so he could drive. For some reason his trust of me had slipped a bit.

Unfortunately it seems Isabella got that sleep gene from me. Even though we knew this, we were shocked to learn from her teacher last year that Isabella fell asleep in circle time the great majority of days. Isabella at circle time was apparently like me at a meeting, albeit without my embarrassment and drooling and potential catastrophic loss of income. We try to get her to sleep longer at night (though she gets plenty of sleep), but we never really considered that it could be something clinical until our dear friend, the lovely Angie, said something to the effect that kids don’t usually drop out in the middle of the day like a rhino under a Wild Kingdom helicopter. (CARRIE EDITORIAL COMMENT: Angie didn’t quite say it like that… and I’m not sure Isabella will be too thrilled to be compared to a rhino.)

At first we went to a new neurologist (not to be confused with a neuneurologist, a doc with expertise in the neuneu) to ask about this. Unfortunately, my COBRA payment to renew our medical insurance hadn’t yet cleared, causing my insurance to show as inactive, causing the neurologist’s distrustful (and hateful, probably) financial staff to demand that I sign over approximately one fourth of my house to them to pay for the appointment (HAHA, the joke’s on them because I don’t even own that much of it yet!). The doc asked some questions about her sleep, listened to our answers, then drew from his vast experience and powers of observation (which likely did not miss Isabella as she fell sound asleep on my lap during the appointment) and said that Isabella would benefit from a sleep study.

I was torn about whether to stick with the neurologist or go with a doctor specializing in sleep issues. The neurologist, though minimizing Isabella’s learning difference and implying that she would “grow out of it,” said he was interested in looking at her MRI scans from a few years back. Though we were specifically there to talk about her sleep issues, he was intrigued by the unusual onset of her symptoms, particular the right side weakness. Or, perhaps, he was intrigued by our solid (but now-faltering) credit score… but for me to think that would mean that I was cynical and distrustful, and we all know that that’s not the case. Right? (CARRIE EDITORIAL COMMENT: no comment.)

Anyway, we decided to schedule an appointment with a sleep doctor at the sleep clinic as well as go back to the neurologist to discuss her earlier MRI scan. We’d let the sleep doc deal with the sleep issues and the neurologist deal with the neurological issues. How novel (speaking as a novelist). Flash forward: the doc at the clinic concurred with the neurologist, and we scheduled an overnight sleep study.

More on that next time…