Sleep Study

Last night I took part in a sleep study. Almost every inch of my face and head were hooked up to wires. I felt like I was entering a science fiction world. A camera recorded my every moment and a nurse talked to me via some electronic device. The room was very white, the sheets and bedding were off-white, but the place was far from a sterile hospital room. More like a hotel room but without all the perks. I had hoped to record a dream, yet with my skin all stickered up with wires and what-not, it was hard to concentrate. Luckily I brought with me a deck of Tarot cards and just meditated on the Strength card to get me relaxed enough to sleep. Before long I forgot I was hooked up to machines. Forgot I was being videotaped. I had hoped that when I woke I'd be told that I talked in my sleep or got up and walked around in a trance, something interesting like that. But not me. I did, however, remember vaguely a dream about walking with Katy Perry through a faerie-filled woods. For some reason she had on big fluffy white bunny ears and she talked a lot. A lot a LOT. Chattering away like a chipmunk on crack. The smell of strawberries and lavender made her fade away and then a crackle of the nurse's voice from that electronic machine woke me up. She told me to try to sleep on my back. I don't like sleeping on my back, but the doctor wants to see how well I sleep on my back. So I did so and couldn't easily fall back to sleep. I damn well tried, however. And just as I was about to fade away into another dream -- a dream I hoped would be worth writing home about -- the pain in my lower back and neck made me fidget. The nurse told me to go ahead and sleep back on my side. I'm a side sleeper and love to hug a pillow, but in that hospital room I didn't have my huge pillow collection from home surrounding me and made do with clutching the blanket. The blanket was thin, not fluffy, slightly old-fashioned looking, but not as comforting as a granma-type quilt like the ones my Aunt Madge would've lent me when I used to sleep at her house. Thinking about my Aunt made me a little sad. Sleep overs at my Aunt Madge's house were interesting and strange sometimes because I usually found myself surrouned by family hand-me-downs and antiques. Aunt Madge had a country house, her kitchen walls were lined with collections of decorative plates. After she died last summer, I inherited her bedroom furniture -- a faux French Provencal vanity dresser set from the 1950s that suites my tastes well -- thinking about my Aunt Madge's old bedroom with its rose pink walls had me sighing, homesick. And just as I thought of Madge, I thought of my mother. Sleeping in the hospital room made me remember how times were like when my mother lived in the nursing home. I never thought her hospital bed looked very comfy. I wanted to shower her with blankets and pillows, but she already had friends from church who donated her a lot of those, some I still have but I don't snuggle up to them. My mother's handmade blankets and pillows are relics now, still too infused with her perfume and presence, and I'm still not completely used to her being dead. As I fell back to sleep, I remembered the way in which my mother was hooked up to oxygen and machines, shrinking away in her little hospital bed as she died. I couldn't help but dream of how that must've felt. I started to feel afraid, worried that my sleep test results would reveal some kind of deadly disorder that would foretell my own death. But, no. I woke up and the nurse told me I showed no signs of sleep apena or any other kind of sleep disorder. This is good news! Now I can be home and fall asleep, safe in the knowing I'm close to normal.