I've been watching you sleep...

That's creepy, isn't it? "I've been watching you sleep..."

The idea that someone is watching them might (assuming the presumptive voyeur is a stranger rather than a loved one) keep most people awake - even if they don't have a generalized anxiety disorder.  And yet, last night, I slept under the watchful gaze of a night vision video camera.  Not, I might add, one which someone was glancing at 'incidentally' now and then, but rather one which was being used to study exactly how I was sleeping, and every move I made.

To understand why I put myself in this unlikely position you need to know two things; chronic tiredness can be both a symptom and a contributory cause of depression, and Mrs Grumbler says I snore like a pig (she'd know, we do keep pigs after all...). The long and short of it is that I ended up with both a wife and a psychiatrist advising me to get myself checked out for sleep problems. I've no desire whatsoever to sleep with my psychiatrist but I am quite partial to she-who-must-be-obeyed's presence in the sack, and so I took myself to the local G.P. and asked his advice. Say what you like about the National Health Service, within a week I had an appointment arranged for a few week's time at a local sleep disorder centre, and that's how I ended up where I was last night.

I turned up at a pre-arranged early evening time and then sat around in a waiting room for best part of 45 minutes without seeing any medical staff. Once they did turn up, however, they proved to be quite special.  I have no idea how many people the nurse who looked after me was taking care of, but she was the only staff member I saw (and I saw five other patients) and she gave me the impression that the ratio was 1:1.

My nurse (never did find out her name) took me to a private room (I had been expecting, and dreading, a shared ward) and explained that polysomnography does not involve sleeping with a parrot; it's actually just a posh way of saying 'sleep study'. This meant I'd be wired to a number of sensors which would track heart rate, breathing, noise and movement, along with the aforementioned camera, whilst I slept.  She invited me to 'slip into something more comfortable' and indicated she'd be back in half an hour.

To preserve what little modesty and dignity I have left I eschewed my usual Monroe-esque night attire (sans Chanel #5 mais avec Brut #33) in favour of a pair of Star Wars 'lounge pants' tastefully emblazoned with R2D2, C3PO and Darth Vader. My nursing angel did wonders for my ego on her return by pronouncing them 'cool' before dashing it on the cruel rocks of reality by telling me that 'I might buy some for my Dad'. I submitted in wounded silence to the affixing of a multitude of sensors with the aid of several hundred metres of what might well have been industrial-strength carpet-tape. Promising to bring me a cup of tea at six am she left me to sleep.

To my surprise I did actually get a good few hours and was awoken with the happy news that my nocturnal activities had generated a lot of interesting data.  I'll have to wait until next week to find out what it all means, but I can categorically state that having a nurse rip electrodes from various appendages first thing in the morning wakes you up really rather quickly...