All hail the Borg Queen

Last night I packed up my penguin jammies, a mindless bedtime book, medications, pillows, earplugs and my usual ridiculous amount of vitamins and supplements, then went to a local hospital for a sleep study as if, Husband pointed out, I were going off to Mars.

When I landed, a nice but much-too-young tech named Mindy ("Don't call me "Missy," she'd said. "Or Mandy. God I hate that.") acclimated me to the atmosphere and showed me to my quarters. It resembled a smallish hotel room, down to the neutral color scheme and the fake armoire hiding the television and defib apparatus. She gave me some paperwork to fill out, asked me some questions, then invited me to put on my pajamas and "relax," and she'd be in soon to hook me up.

I don't know. "Relax" and "hook me up" somehow don't belong in the same sentence.

But I tried. I changed, took my nighttime medications, had my bedtime snack, feathered up my nest and then, exhausted from my long day of work, from being sick as a dog half the night before (bad reaction to Naprosyn...another drug off my list), from fretting about the test itself and from hauling all my stuff out of my car and into my room, I simply collapsed onto the bed, spread-eagled and slack-jawed. I didn't want to move. Ever. Then, as the buzz of the fluorescent lights began to sink into a hum and the calls from the paging system drifted into the background of my brain, I was beginning to fear that I'd fall asleep before Mindy could hook me up in order to go to sleep.

At about 9:30, Mindy flounced into my room with a smile and a tray full of gewgaws and whacha-thingies that put me in mind of a combination of the Borg Queen's beauty salon/spare parts lab and Dustin Hoffman's trip to the dentist in "Marathon Man."

While it wasn't as horrific as some had warned me (see comments from AaA, Irony Board, 7/21), my cyborg transformation wasn't all that bad. If you don't mind having your face, neck and scalp exfoliated to accept electrode pads (spa services were on the house), two velcro bands across your chest, a tube in your nose and strapped behind your ears, one hooked over your lip and a tiny camera aimed to follow the movements of your eyes. The whole operation took about twenty minutes. I was already starting to nod off in the chair. Then she bundled all my wires into what she called a "ponytail box," which could be quickly disconnected if I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, stuck an oxygen monitor on my finger, and attempted to get me and the twenty yards of hardware I was trailing comfortably into bed.

She'd told me what the wires were for. This one to measure heartrate. This one to measure brainwaves. It knows when you are sleeping. It knows when you're awake. It knows when you've been--

"You'll forget about that stuff in about fifteen minutes," Mindy said. Owing to the drugs which were now lulling me into my usual pre-beddy stupor and the amount of gear constricting the movement of my lips, I think I said something in return. Something to the effect of "Yeah, dandy, just leave me alone so I can pass out already." At least the falling asleep part of my sleep disorder wasn't going to be a problem that night.

Mindy said she was going to her command post, and would give me a series of commands through my earphones (I had earphones in this thing? But I was wearing earplugs!) so she could calibrate the equipment, and I was supposed to answer her back. Apparently the thing hooked over my lip was a microphone. Then she left, and I heard this weird voice in my head, like maybe I was flying to Mars or had gotten lost inside a video game. She had me move my eyes this way and that, blink a few times in succession, move my feet, take some quick breaths, some slow breaths, then hold my breath.

Then she said she was signing off.

The silence was freaky. The wires were strange. The electrodes and finger-cuff I couldn't feel, but this tube in my mouth and nose...what if I pulled them out during the night? How do people who aren't tanked on Ativan handle this at all?

But Mindy was right. Very soon I stopped feeling the wires.

But I was feeling cold. Now I like sleeping in a cold room as much as the next semi-menopausal woman. At home, I crank the AC down so low that frost forms on the windows and my hands get stiff if I leave them outside the blankets. It got me wondering if the Sleep Center shared an HVAC system with the morgue. But I pulled the bedspread atop the whole concoction of me, machinery, top sheet and blanket, and I was fine.

As zonked as I was, it took me a while to go under. Maybe it was the silence, the unfamiliarity of the room, the bed, the air, the realization that this was finally underway. I only woke up once, at about 4:30, after this really vivid writer-type dream which included foreshadowing and metaphors and would probably make a great novel if I could remember all the details. I didn't think I fell back to sleep after my bathroom break, but when the little voice in my ear told me it would be coming in to remove my wires now, Mindy and the Great and Powerful Oz said that I had.

Then, after wire removal, a shower to get the adhesive off, and not the worst hospital breakfast I've ever had, I packed up my caravan and reentered Earth's orbit.

As odd as the experience was, the odder one is that once I fell asleep, I slept better than I do at home.

Perhaps now I know the answer to my sleep problem. Exfoliate my skin and attach a bunch of electrodes to myself before I turn in, set the AC on "stun," and hire someone to talk to me on a tiny microphone and watch me sleep from the next room.

Or just give in and join the Borg Collective. Resistance is, after all, futile.