zzzZZZzzz..Sleep Study..zzzZZZzzz

One week of Sleep Deprivation, Radiotracers, and Wires on the Cranium.

-Tuesday night / Wednesday Morning / Wednesday night / Thursday Morning / Thursday Night / Friday morning-

Reconstructed from chicken scratches jerking across several legal pad pages, with parentheticals only as needed for clarity. I remember the act of writing, but not the content.

They are wiring an older woman when I enter. Accustomed to the drill of not checking in, I take my book to the break room. Flo nods hello from her office, she’s on the phone.

Reading ‘My Cold War’ in the break room when the older gentleman – as yet unwired – walks in with Michael Crichton’s ‘Congo’ under one arm and a vhs tape under the other.

“Mind if I pop this in?” He doesn’t really ask, but I say okay. Turns out the movie is Flashdance.

“Filmed in Pittsburgh” he says proudly, and a bit defensively, too.
I completely understand.

Jennifer Beales dances to ‘Maniac.’
“Do you remember when you were that limber?” the last is directed to the woman who has just finished the wiring process.
“I was never that limber.” She replies without a trace of embarrassment. A third participant in the healthy senior sleep study sits down on the couch. On cue, Flashdance goes from sensually suggestive to simplistically slutty. Tech C. takes me out to the wiring room at the same time Jennifer Beales removes her friend from the strip joint.

Maybe tonight is intended to be folksy, but a number of the staffers here have taken it upon themselves to be generous today. Tech D. allows me to visit the fourth floor vending machines. Scientist J. drove in with some old movies. Tech C. has given me a long cord on my wiring, so all the breakroom is within my reach.

So here I am tethered, until seven in the morning. This is the deprivation we were promised. My resources for whiling away the time are at hand: 3 books, 2 movies, one legal pad. I’m using the latter to write this.

So cruel – the scientists are making me stay up all night, but they are not allowing me to roam freely through the halls of this medical fun house. As before, my cranial wiring is connected to a tether that allows me a six foot radius in the breakroom. How can [I] entertain and occupy myself with so few diversions? I’ve read several books here, but this activity seduces the tired mind. This evening I began to nod over a book, and the tech from the control room came over to inform me politely but firmly that I needed to put the book down and do something else.

He could not see my head drooping; he read data indicating that I was not reading down line by line, which his machinery registers as clearly as a typewriter bell. Maybe the brainpower used to focus and unfocus one’s eyes appears less energetic, but I shall endeavor to prove the incredible return of this style of reading, gaining in perspective what it gives up in speed. The same thing happened to me in college, actually, and I continued to take notes on a two hour and fifty minute lecture even as my head nodded, and my pen continued to form letters, but never advanced rightward on the sheet of paper after each character, so that each character occupied the same space.