In Which I... Zzz...

The hotel room was mostly dark. The main source of light in the room is from a crack in the thick curtains drawn over the window, which cuts a path across the patterned easy chair and along the foot of the queen-sized bed. Next to the left side of the bed, a pair of electronic devices casts off an erie glow from their various buttons and green backlight displays. A small fan, humming quietly on the night stand on the right side, is the only noise to be heard in the room.

A thick tangle of wires attached to the two machines trace underneath the covers to a lone figure lying still in the middle of the bed. The wires then spread out like an intricate root system to various locations on the man's body. Over a dozen of the wires, with gold-plated leads on the end, form a pattern on the man's skull and face, held in place by conductive paste and adhesive gauze. Six more wires run underneath his clothes, two each attached to both the left and right calf leg on the calf, and the remaining leads to each side of his abdomen. Four more wires lead to two elastic bands, wrapped around his upper chest and lower abdomen.

Two small sensors rest just inside each nostril, held in place by a drawstring cord wrapped around his ears and under his chin. Wires leading from those sensors, along with a wire each for a lead attached to his upper chest, a microphone held in place with tape under his throat, and an oxygen sensor on his right forefinger, complete the setup.

The door to the hotel room opens, and a tall woman in nursing scrubs enters the room. She leaves the door open behind her, using the light from the hallway to see in the otherwise dark room. Making her way silently to the left side of the bed, she pushes a few buttons on the devices, writes something down on the clipboard she is holding, and turns to face the figure lying on the bed.

"Are you all set to go to sleep, Michael?" the nurse asks softly, and reaches up with one hand to brush hair out of her face.

"I suppose so," Michael responds, trying to hide his obvious discomfort.

"Alright then. I'll see you in the morning." The nurse places her clipboard under her arm and walks toward the door.

"Sleep well!" she calls, and the door closes behind her.

Alone once again, Michael remains still under the scratchy white sheets and light blanket.

This is going to be a long night, he thinks to himself with heavy resolution.

And a long night it was.

---

It feels good to be back in the swing of things after my vacation this past week, and I hope you all enjoyed the guest entries as much as I did. I won't give you the play-by-play of what The Boss and I did with our free time, because we honestly didn't do too much. It was good to spend the time together, and we made good use of every day that we had.

Before I elaborate on what I wrote in the first part of this post, I want to say Thank You to the six writers who filled this space with their funny stories while I was gone. I greatly appreciate the effort put forth by all of you, and I (platonically) love you.

Now, back to what I started with. On Sunday I went down to Boston with The Boss and my mother for a sleep study, in hopes to learn more about what is going on. The study was held in a renovated wing of the Holiday Inn next to the hospital. As I described, I had about 30 different wires attached to me, and was expected to be able to sleep. I was not able to move around or get comfortable at all, I slept for minutes at a time for most of the night. At one point I was able to sleep for about thirty minutes, and achieved REM cycle sleep during that period. For the uninformed, getting to a REM cycle in only thirty minutes of sleeping is quite fast. I estimate that I slept for about an hour total during the entire night.

The main idea to getting the sleep study done was to get visual proof to back up the EEG information of what happens when I am sleeping. If the EEG shows a spike in brain activity while having a leg or arm movement, that would probably push the diagnosis towards epilepsy. If there is no brain activity at the time of an episode, and if movements occur during REM sleep (one's body is supposed to be essentially paralyzed during the REM cycle), that would further support the diagnosis that I am seeking of myoclonus. I won't get the full results from the test for a couple of weeks, so I'll be waiting impatiently for that.

I was picked up at 6:00am the morning after the study. I slept for another hour where The Boss and my mother were staying, and after getting some breakfast we made the trip home. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, which was fine with me. I'm not capable of doing much with only two hours of sleep. We all went to bed early that night.

With The Boss at work all day, I spent Tuesday doing some errands around town, and then was finally able to sit down and get caught up on all the blogs I had missed reading while I was gone (94 new entries!). I am still exhausted, but glad to be back to my regular schedule this week.

In more ways than one, it feels good to be home.