Category: It Happened to Me

Photo by Will Pate. Click to see the original.

When I got onto the elevator in my building this morning, an older man and woman were already in the car, discussing the repair work being done on the building, which is showing its age. When the woman left at the ground floor, the man turned to me.

“Young man, when you’ve lived in this building for a while, you see the same people, year after year. They get older, and you see it — they’re going down, down, down.”

As he said “Down, down, down,” he pantomimed a falling leaf with his hand.

“Well,” I said as I shrugged, “it eventually happens to everyone.”

“That,” he said as he left, “is the only good thing about it.”

You know how to bring down a room, big guy.

In response to the article Where I Slept Tuesday Night,, my article about my night at the sleep lab at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, a “goatchowder” commented:

If you’d been living in the USA, that test would have cost you US$6000.

An anonymous commenter replied:

The flipside in Canada is that it takes about 6 months to get an appointment with a sleep specialist (and you need to see your GP first to get a referral) who can prescribe the sleep study.

That wasn’t the case for me.

So How Long Did I Have to Wait?

I had an appointment with my GP on June 5th. She said she could book me into the sleep lab on the week of Monday, June 18th, a mere two weeks later. I told her that I couldn’t make it then, as I would be in Boston all that week. I asked for a later date, and the booking people at the lab suggested July 3rd, the Tuesday after the long weekend. So I took it.

Simply put, I could’ve had the sleep lab appointment in 2 weeks, but since my schedule didn’t allow me, I got it in 4 weeks. And with a referral from my GP, not a sleep specialist, with a single phone call and for no direct charge (universal health care comes from taxes).

Sleep Lab and Auto-CPAP Costs in the U.S.

While I’m on the topic, can anyone in the U.S. who’s had a sleep study done on them tell me how much it costs, and whether or not it was covered by your insurance?

The anonymous commenter also included quite a bit about auto-CPAP machines. Here’s an excerpt:

Once you’ve figured out what you need, the big expense is buying the machine. I’m not sure about the States but in Canada the government pays for half, and often your work insurance pays for the other half. If you don’t have insurance, you pay for it yourself (about $1000).

So the Canadian system stills finds a way to screw the under-privileged.

My belief is that the deal’s about the same in the U.S., especially if you’re living below the median. Can anyone with experience or data confirm or counter this belief?

The Ginger Ninja was a bit concerned about my snoring and claims it sounds as though I stop breathing in my sleep — a sign of possible sleep apnea. Although I generally wake up feeling rested, I thought that it would be a good idea to get myself booked into a sleep lab. Hence I spent Tuesday night here:

It was simple enough. After going for 24 hours without caffeine (which gave me a headache, a sure sign that I really should cut down), I showed up at 9:30 p.m. and was led to my room, where I filled out a couple of questionnaires about my sleeping habits and then read while waiting for the tech to prep me.

About an hour later, I got wired up — quite literally — with a number of sensors:

• On my forehead
• Behind by ears
• On my head (which meant that I had hair full of electroconductive goop)
• On my neck (a piezoelectric sensor to detect snoring)
• On my nose (to detect nose breathing)
• A band across my chest
• A band across my stomach
• On my lower legs (to detect leg twitching)
• On my right index finger (heartbeat monitor)

Once wired, the tech went into the control room and asked me over the intercom to do a number of things to calibrate the sensors, such as:

• Alternating between looking up and down
• Alternating between looking left and right
• Pointing the toes in my left and right legs
• Closing my eyes
• Breathing only through my nose
• Breathing only through my mouth

In addition to all these sensors, I noticed the night-vision camera on the opposite wall pointing at the bed. I’m pulling out this wedgie in the bathroom, I thought.

Once this was done, they brought me a reading light to my beside and told me that I should try to fall asleep between 11:00 p.m. and midnight. I was already feeling tired from a lack of caffeine and after reading a few chapters of Everything is Miscellaneous, I decided to turn out the light. It was around 11:30.

In spite of being in a strange bed, having all these cables tugging at me and the bright red light of the fingertip heartbeat sensor, I fell asleep quickly (as I normally do). The bed was comfy and the room was quiet and had a decent air conditioner. They woke me up at 6:30, and after disengaging me from the sensor pack and filling out a one-sheet questionnaire on how I slept, I headed off to work since it was really close by.

I guess I’ll be hearing from my doctor soon.