Guinea Piggie

A few days ago was the overnight screening for my much anticipated sleep study. I made sure to lay off the dope and take it easy on the sauce over the holidays and even shaved my beard for the occasion (mainly because I had to).

After filling out some paperwork, getting measured (79.5kg & 6ft 3.25in) and agreeing to wear some incredibly expensive special sensor-watches. I was shown to the room where I would be spending the night.  It seemed like for once, I truly had it all:

• 3 TVs w/VCR and a big ole’ heap of VHS tapes
• A Minifridge with a bit of paper towel stuck on a door as some sort of crude detection device. (I never opened it)
• Chair w/rollie table – this is where I spent most of my time (see below img)
• An assortment of national geographics
• A Baffroom
• Wall-mount blood pressure cuffs & pure oxygen on tap
• Increda-fast internet
• A camera on a torrent that followed me around the room…

For my dinner I selected this:

….which actually looked like this:

After a few hours of surfing the net and video chatting with my lovely Lauren and trying to keep my hands out of my pants and fingers out of my nose as there was a camera pointed directly at me and someone watching on the other side. A stressed out she-doctor with a heavy Russian accent came in the room and proceeded to cover me in electrodes and sensors. Nothing was left un-monitored. Head, eyes, jaws, nose-breath, chest, legs, ding-dong. She applied gooey stuff to my hairy parts and made sure everything stayed put with a lovely net. I now looked like this:

and this is my wiring harness:

Lauren said I looked like a goth and began to worry about my well being. I was told to sleep at 11pm and the Russian lady came over a loudspeaker in the room and had me do things like move my eyes and make snore-sounds to calibrate the equipment.
I had a hard time sleeping because I was thinking about how I had to sleep…that and the room was really hot. Once I was asleep things were fairly uneventful. (That’s when they uploaded my brain into the robot body)

Oh yeah and that camera had infrared leds on it so it could see me in the dark…and there was a microphone in the room to listen to my every little peep….

I was awoken 8 hours later and told not to eat, drink or swallow my toothpaste for on this day I would receive a glucose tolerance test.  I was measured again (same) and given and EKG and then allowed to hang out online as I often do these days.

Then a nurse came in with the glucose I was to tolerate. It was suspiciously similar in sweetness, color, and flavor to fountain syrup Orange Crush….75g of sugar in a single cup!

Then she stuck me with a iv/catheter (that’s a small flexible needle that goes in your vein and stays there for awhile).

The nurse began taking the initial 10 or so sample-vials of blood as I thought about that little tube suckin’ away in my little vein. Towards the end of it I got a little dizzy. I told the lady “I’m feeling a little dizzy.”

Huge mistake.

She ordered me to put my head in my lap and yelled for some smelling salts aromatic spirits of ammonia. That aroused the bejeesus out of my consciousness and I was told to lay down on my bed. I was fine in a hot minute and went back to surfing the world wide web.
I proceeded to get a blood drawing every 1/2 hour for the next 3 hours and towards the end I was told that because of my dizzy episode I was not eligible for the study and also that I didn’t have diabetes.

I still apparently get $50 for the screening and another $25 for wearing those watches so the whole thing can sort of written off as a sort of check-up + $75.
Maybe I’m just not cut out for a career in being the subject of medical studies…

I also got a much needed new laptop off Craigslist at a suspiciously low price.

Moral of the story: If you feel at all dizzy, keep your mouth shut.

<3 JAR

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