This happened to me.
Ever Done a Sleep Study?
Surely they don’t expect you to actually sleep.
My doc, PCP (Personal Care Physician), formerly known as Doc Adams*, concluded that I am not getting restful sleep. That, I already knew.
*(Gunsmoke? Anybody? Too obscure? Hey, I’m really old!)
The challenge lies in finding out why. The list of possible causes is long.
Accordingly, “they” have assembled teams of trained torturers to wire sleepless folks up like a 1970s IBM. That process takes at least an hour; then they test it, find out something isn’t connected right, hunt it down, e̵x̵t̵e̵r̵m̵i̵n̵a̵t̵e̵ fix it, rinse, repeat.
It’s not painful, exactly. It is tedious, and the worst part is probably the hairnet. At least, that’s what I call it. The torturer quite literally glues a couple dozen leads onto your scalp. The hair must be gathered, twisted, and pin-curled so the sensor is in complete contact with nothing but skin. It’s not only hecka fun (/S); it’s a hoot to see and only takes a couple of long showers to get it all out.
The hairnet is essential because it lets “them” see your brainwaves when/if you actually manage to get to sleep.
That bundle of colorful wires over my shoulder plugged into the pinboard swinging from the lanyard are all from the hairnet. I have many other electrodes stuck under my clothes. The chest and waist belts measure respiration and stuff (“they” told me what, but I forgot). “They” have to unhook some of the stuff and hang it around your neck so’s you can get to the commode where you can take a mirror selfie with your smartphone (and many of you probably know how much I hate using a phone as a camera but it was the one I had with me so sue me). Surprisingly, I don’t think I look as mizzable as I felt.
The pictures don’t reveal the torture devices that were glued onto my kisser just as I got into bed a little after nine, including something that dangled off my nose to measure — my nose? I wish I hadda pitcher of that. I felt like this guy:
The image linked here is claimed to be used under fair use as: It is a significant image of Clive Barker’s work, Pinhead in question; It is much lower resolution than the original (notably in JPEG format).
So there I wuz, flat on my back (although I am a confirmed side sleeper and they told me to go ahead but it was impossible and I can still hear the giggling), feeling precisely like poor ol’ Pinhead the Cenobite and wondering how a nail-studded demon manages to sleep. Then I realized, demons don’t sleep. Neither do Sufi faqirs, I guess — you know, the old bed-of-nails meme (which it turns out is actually a thing)?
Wikimedia File: Fakir on a bed of nails Benares India 1907. jpg. Created: 1 January 1907, by Herbert Ponting
I ruminated on that and other things for well over an hour, trying desperately to sleep.
It’sa sleep study, f’cryin’ out loud! YA GOTTA SLEEP!
Telling yourself that while desperately trying to get “comfortable” 🤣 is amazingly soporific. Not.
Nearing midnight, I called for the torturer (actually a very nice former Marine who was gentle and sympathetic) and told him I was done. I wanted o-u-t out. He calmly explained that if I didn’t spend at least six hours trying to sleep, my insurance would stick me with the entire bill plus a new wing on the hospital that they wouldn’t even name after me.
That was pretty slumberous. Terrifically, actually. I sort of slept, at least enough for “them” to get some measurable data. “They” said. It will be two to four weeks (!!) before they collate it all and tell me to just get a bigger dead-blow rubber mallet.
I went home, showered — lots of showering — and went to bed for the rest of the day.
Which meant I couldn’t get to sleep Friday night.
This was all last Friday, and I am only now (Tuesday) recovered enough to write this ridiculous story.
Being that I am a photographer, you may have noticed that the banner photo at the top is the same as the vertical below left. I want to tell you how I did that using the latest AI gee-whiz-bangs.
I recently wrote a couple of pieces on Adobe Photoshop Beta’s new Generative Fill. I am still only scratching the surface of what I am confident it can do, but when I got the idea for this story I wanted a horizontal banner photo, but everything I’d shot was vertical. I added enough white canvas equally on both sides to permit cropping to a 16:9, used the marquee tool to select the two white wings with a few pixels of overlap, and let Generative Fill do its miraculous thing. I think hardly anyone would know, if I didn’t ethically disclose, that the AI seamlessly extrapolated the “missing” parts, in seconds. I remain gobsmacked. Adobe promises it trains its AI using Adobe Stock Photos that are either free or already paid for, so it isn’t theft.
I know; it’s scary, but scary good.
📸As always, gratitude for looking in. I sincerely appreciate it! 😊👍
