I spent the night sleeping in the most expensive room I have stayed at in the last fifteen years. Thing is? It was a pretty institutional looking room. The service was fantastic however: one on one. I never saw another face from check-in to check-out.
I went to the hospital to sleep.
The last time I stayed in such an expensive room was my last sleep study 15 years ago. Since it had been so long ago the doctor wanted a more recent one. Which we both know is bogus, the doctor had a boat payment due and needed some extra revenue. But to keep peace in the family, I slept at the hospital last night.
Backstory:
I was supposed to have the sleep study done a couple weeks ago, but the tech called security and had me thrown off the premises.
I can be very cranky when it comes to waiting in doctor’s offices. But this wasn’t one of those times. As a matter of fact, my previous sleep study was a pretty neat experience, so I was thinking up clever lines and knew I could get a blog post out of the deal. Lines like: my last sleep study was so long ago it was interns with polaroids… they send me home with a Hoover hooked up to blow rather than suck… ba dump bump, ching!

The appointment was at 9:30 p.m. I was ten minutes early, walked into a totally vacant waiting room. No instructions on what I should do, so I park it and pick up the U.S. News to read about the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam.

I could hear voices, so after ten minutes and at my appointment time, I stepped to the counter and called out, heeeellllloooo??? Nobody appears. At  9:40, I decide to give it another try and raised my voice to slightly above normal speaking – like if you were trying to get the attention of someone in a room down a hallway.

Mr. Nebraska Cornhusker (that’s what was written on his faded red polo shirt) came through the door and held up his hand and announced “quiet, I have people sleeping back here.  Since the clinic didn’t open until 9 p.m. he was lying. He did a 180 spin on his heelies and went back into the inner sanctum. I strolled around the office, looked at some patient files and charts laying on the counter. Check the appointment print-out for the next day to see who was coming in, their Social Security Number and their reason for their appointment, while I plotted my next move.

I poked my head through the door and asked  the Cornhusker if he was going to help me or not. He threw a gen-u-wine hissy fit. “I’m calling Dr. K” he said much louder than I said “heeeeeeeelllllllllooooo.” I asked him who Dr. K was since that wasn’t my doc. “Dr. K owns the place” I was told, and then he added that he was calling security.

Security! A mall cop! He was going to call a mall cop! He was going to have me thrown out by a mall cop!

Since Cornhusker just so loopy, it was easy for me to be calm. There was no question who was in the right. I said I would wait for Security and had a seat and got very calm. Mr. Hospital Security was very professional, I had my say, Mr. Cornhusker had another little hissy fit when I tried to close the door between us and him because I “didn’t own that door.”

And that’s how I got thrown out of a sleep lab.

I asked my Doc to get me into another lab, which she did.

I can’t say I had a restful night, but I think something good will come out of the study. If nothing else, I tried a new CPAP mask that was much better than the model I’m using now.