Saturday, April 4, 1998 | 4:06 a.m.
SCOTT DICKENSHEETS' column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at 259-4082 or [email protected]
COLUMN BOY needs a nightie.
I'm packing for an overnighter at the sleep-disorder clinic at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and I don't know what to wear. What looks best with electrodes -- spandex shorts and a form-fitting mesh top? No, better save that for dress-down Friday at the office. I settle on the classic sweat pants and baggy T-shirt.
It's media night at the Regional Center for Sleep Disorders, to promote awareness of sleep-related problems (for instance, thousands of auto accidents are attributed to sleep problems). Media types will spend the night hooked up to the diagnostic polygraph and other machinery that monitors brain waves, breathing patterns, leg movements and oxygen level.
I arrive at 9 p.m. Other than Michelle, the evening technician, and I, the place is empty. I am, it seems, the only media person with the guts, free time or desperate-enough need for column material to take them up on it. Then it hits me: It's April 1! This is all a prank, and, in a few days, embarrassing video of me drooling in my sleep will begin popping up as station breaks on the SUN's new cable news channel.
Normally, of course, the center's four beds are filled with people who have actual sleep problems. "There's a waiting list to get in," Michelle says, pasting an electrode to my scalp. Seventy percent of the center's patients have some sort of sleep apnea, which means they have to wake up frequently to breathe. The rest have a variety of snoring, work-shift and other problems.
As Michelle attached a dozen or so electrodes to the back of my head, my face and legs and pointed out the infrared video camera that would be trained on me, I realized that there was no way I could fall asleep. The sleep disorder clinic itself would become my sleep disorder. With the strange bed, strange room, the performance anxiety -- you want to snooze your best for the nice technicians -- it was going to be a long night of drowsy tossing and turning amid a tangle of wires ...
"You were out in under three minutes," says Lee, a spiffily dressed technician, the next morning. In fact, I slept great. As Dr. Paul Saskin, the center's director, goes over my chart -- a 4-inch thick pile of graph paper, each sheet recording 30 seconds of my night life -- a surprising fact emerges: I actually do have monitorable brain waves! I must sit down.
I also have a minor sleep-breathing problem, "nothing clinically significant," according to Saskin. "But you didn't sleep continually." Well, I have kids, dogs and a wife who must dream about being a power forward, the way she uses her elbows at night. Non-continuous sleep is nothing new to me.
One final thing, a note to my wife. OK, OK, you're right after all -- I do snore. And yeah, loudly, too. But admit it, you were wrong about the brain waves.
**
Column Boy needs a breather. In the coming days you may note, with varying degrees of relief, that this space will be even more vacant than usual; I will be on vacation.
Take comfort, though: I'm not going anywhere or doing anything -- I can't afford to. I'll mostly putter around the house. Now, you may have been under the impression that Column Boy doesn't putter. Column Boy putters. Look out, garage! Brace yourself, backyard!
Anyway, don't lose any sleep over my absence. I'll return April 17 to again column as I see 'em.
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