(Continuation from part 2 ).

We both fell asleep, though I awoke several times due to the strange design of the tricked-out pull-out futon, a genius design which caused the top third of the bed to be a few inches higher than the rest of the bed. Luckily, Isabella slept through the night.

Until about 2:45am. Apparently an electrode had stopped working, and apparently the best way to fix that apparent problem was to have a technician come in and turn on the overhead light while she fiddled with it. Then turn the light off, wait, then come back in and turn the light on again, ensuring that the subject of your sleep study has a nice big chunk of uninterrupted awake time in the middle of the night.

Needless to say, Isabella wasn’t too excited about going back to sleep after that, and she got extremely upset when I said that I had to go to the bathroom, my bladder capacity being normal size despite the fact that my fluid intake is twice normal. Isabella wouldn’t have any of that, and I knew that if she saw me leave her and head to the restroom -- she couldn’t see it from her bed --, then she would get out of bed and yank all of the wires out as she ran to see where I’d gone during her abandonment. So I said with no bitterness or sarcasm, “Fine, I’ll hold it FOREVER,” at which point she nodded, satisfied that that was the correct response. She finally lay back down and I snuck to the restroom, leaving the door open to listen for Isabella but a bit afraid that the tech would decide to bust in again, only to find me, well, you know.

I made it back without incident.

The next morning, they roused us from REM sleep at around 5 or 5:15am. Why so early, I don’t know. I guess they wanted to get the room prepped for the next patients that were due to arrive in only 13 or 14 hours. The tech came in and began removing the electrodes. The ones with tape holding them down needed some stinky chemical poured on them to loosen, while the ones cemented to her scalp needed some chemicals even more stinky to loosen them. (UPDATE: we later discovered that the tech had left a huge chunk of glue in her scalp that no amount of washing could remove. It finally began breaking up, and I think it was all gone after about a week or so.)

Finally we were out. I cleverly forgot to pack up Isabella’s toiletry bag and medicine. (UPDATE: Luckily for us, the kind staff later discovered this and, rather than disturb us with a phone call that we’d left things there, put the bag into their Lost and Found and waited to see if we would discover where in the heck Isabella’s medicine had wandered off to.) Isabella asked why we had gotten out of bed when it was still nighttime. Like I said above, I wanted to know that too, but I thought maybe the doc would explain it later at the follow-up.

A few days later, Carrie and I went to the sleep doctor (Hillary Pearson, a wonderful and patient doctor) and discussed the results. As always when looking at exploratory test results, I half wanted nothing to be wrong and half wanted for them to find something so that we’d have something to fix. It was the former. Isabella’s sleep looked normal (other than the 40+ minute gap caused by the failing electrode and the flashlight-less tech), though her REM sleep percentage was low. The doc explained that that was likely due to the fact that the percentage of REM sleep typically increases throughout the night, with the most concentrated REM sleep occurring in the morning. For Isabella’s case, that would have been the 5am – 7am time slot, the time that she was deprived of sleep during the study. So I’m still confused as to why they shooed us out so early. The doc suggested that she might just be one of those people (like her parents) that need a lot of sleep. Alas.

So I wouldn’t recommend a sleep study if the patient (e.g. your child) won’t tolerate the electrodes, if you as the guardian can’t sleep on oddly uneven surfaces, if you don’t want sleep technicians laughing at your parenting skills or sleeping habits as they watch through the cameras, or if any of the above just generally freaks you out. For our case, I’m glad we did it. Though it was a minor ordeal and though we didn’t find a “cure,” we were able to rule out several things (seizures, apnea, etc). And I squeezed three lame blogs out of it. I guess I’ll take that.