Time for Bed

said Zebedee, as he closed down The Magic Roundabout for the night, but for myself Thursday night was more like The Tragic Gadabout.

Thursday was my night in the sleep clinic at the hospital. This had been on the cards for quite a while as my sleep is being investigated due to tiredness in the afternoons. My sleep pattern has always been bad, even as a kid – taking a lot of time to sleep and waking up a number of times a night. Prior to the clinic visit I had worn a watch measuring my sleep pattern for two weeks and kept a sleep diary. No, not Dear Diary, last night I had a dream about being a bestselling writer and winning the lottery. It is more about how long to get to sleep and how many times you woke up. It is quite hard to be accurate on these things.

I had a strict time of arrival so I did not clash with other patients – 8.15 pm sharp. After sitting in the car park for 15 minutes, I buzzed the buzzer exactly on time. I was met by a Sleep Technician (ST), my height and weight measured and then shown to my room. The first thing was a Covid test. While I had the swab stuck in my mouth and up both nostrils, I noticed something. Before my appointment was arranged I had spoken to the consultant about what happened and he said that the idea was to try to approximate as far as possible a normal evening. Easy for me, TV then 30 minutes reading in bed. No problem, the consultant told me, there was a TV in every room. There I was then, trying not to sneeze with the swab up my nose, with it making me feel like I had got water up it, and I saw a bracket on the wall and a bunch of wires. “I thought there was a TV,” I said. I was told that there was in every other room but the one in that room was broken so had been taken away. Not a good start.

The ST left for a bit and I stood there wondering what I was going to do for two hours. She then came back and asked me how important a TV was because they had another room free – 6 rooms but only 5 patients that night. Did I want to move? I said yes, if it was not too much trouble. So off we went down the corridor to a new room. The TV was already on but no sound. I thought that was intentional so as not as to disturb patients unduly but we both had a go messing about with it and we could not get the sound on. In the end I had to put the subtitles on. I started watching “Live and Let Die” and realised it is quite fun watching a film you know so well you can guess the subtitles before they come up. “Sheer magnetism, darling.”

The ST came back to wire me up about 9.30 pm. I knew I would have some wires attached but I didn’t realise there would be millions of them. I had wires attached to everywhere – chest, throat, even the top of my head where they attached them with some kind of paste. Then calamity struck again. The main belt that went round the waist, which held the box to plug all the wires into, would not fasten. She had to get another one. After about half an hour I was all trussed up and looked like Frankenstein’s monster. I had to visit the toilet with all that on. There were some attached to my legs so there were a couple of danglers and I had to try hard not to get any of them wet.