Sleep(less) Study #2

It started raining on our drive up to Buffalo Children's yesterday evening. Sleeping in one's clothes is never a comfortable business, but sleeping in damp clothes is rather unpleasant. Ugh.

We checked in at 8:00pm and were old pros at getting hooked up- Nolan got into his jammies and we started applying the 6 quatrillion leads and wires to his body. Two leads on each leg, a few on his chest, several on his head (including under his eyes and on his chin), two belts around his chest, and a nasal cannula for monitoring CO2 on his face. And the pulse-ox, too. We can't forget about the pulse-ox.

Nolan was generally a good sport, though he did get anxious from time to time and declared, "These stickers hurt me!" They didn't really hurt, of course, but Nolan was worried the would start to hurt, or were harbingers of worse to come. The pulse-ox brought more tears, and we gave him the option of wearing it on his toe or his finger. Through sobs, he announced, "ON MY FINGER!" The nasal cannula was the coup de grâce, causing general shrieks and outrage. He settled down fairly easily, however, and was soon only whimpering about getting the "tubie" off.

I promised him that if he went to sleep, that we would take everything off in the morning. He looked at me and said, "Sun come up, take tubie off. Take stickers off." This seemed to calm him down greatly, though he was still anxious. The pulse-ox on his finger was of considerable concern. He decided he'd rather have it on his toe, or better: he'd rather have it taken off entirely.

A flash of brilliance entered my mommy brain. "It's a light saber. You're a Jedi." Adding in some detailed accounts of how jealous his brother would be to have a light-saber-finger sealed the deal. Nolan started battling "light sabers" with his fingers, and fell asleep in short order.

I stayed awake for a while to watch his CO2 monitor (his respiration rate and CO2 concentration are the only monitors in the sleep study room). I'm pretty sure he had some apneas, but we won't know for sure until we get the report back from the neurology center on August 19th. In any case, he slept better than he did for the last sleep study, giving us a good deal of sleep time to monitor his breathing.

I happened to wake up at 5:00am, which was good because the Sleep Study center comes in to wake everyone at this time. The technician came in and we unhooked Nolan from his myriad tubes and wires. The EEG goo left his hair looking rather disgusting, so I washed some of it out in the sink. I just got his temples, but it was enough to allow him to wear his hearing aids again! It was a relief to get to the parking garage, because we looked like zombies- covered in splotches of goop with a bad case of bed-head.

70 miles later, Nolan fell asleep again. This was rather convenient, because I placed him on the couch and brewed the Biggest Pot of Coffee That Ever Existed.

I'm going to end this post now, because the coffee is calling. Here's to a good report, with no future sleep studies required!