Last night I went to my first ever Sleep Study at a local hospital. For years my wife has been bugging me to talk to my doctor about issues I have when I sleep. For the record, I have no idea what people are talking about because I think I sleep pretty well. But, I have been told that I snore really, really loud and my wife thinks that I stop breathing “100 times an hour!”

Well, I never notice because I’m too busy sleeping, but I decided to talk to the doctor about all of this and he walked me through a questionnaire. Ends up he thinks I could have an issue with Sleep Apnea so he sent me off to the Sleep Study last night.

I’m the type of person that can fall asleep anywhere. When I travel I often fall asleep before the plane gets in the air. I am usually sleeping within seconds of my head hitting the pillow. But not last night. Not when it counted the most. I arrived at the hospital for my appointment barely awake. I figured this was a good sign. Then they checked me in, let me watch a little bit of the Steeler game, and then proceeded to stick numerous electrodes all over my head, a couple on my chest, and a couple on my legs. No big deal. I was still ready for sleeping. But they said I had to stay awake until 11pm, so I watched most of the Steeler game and the TV shut off automatically.

Then it happened – I could not get to sleep to save my life. Maybe it was the tube in my nose. Maybe it was the mile of wires hanging off of me. Maybe it was the fact that I could hear the entire conversation that the Nurse was having on the phone to a sister somewhere. Maybe it was the thing taped to my left index finger that glowed as bright red as Rudolph’s nose. Or, it could have been the big red light on the ceiling that had to stay on all night. Who knows? Whatever the reason, I could not get to sleep.

Then I had to use the bathroom, so you have to call for them (there is a microphone above the bed) and wave your hands so they see you on the camera. Did I mention that this is all video recorded? They come in and unhook you from the monitors and wrap all of the wires and harnesses around you and you then waddle your way to the bathroom down the hall. It is not easy to use the bathroom with wires and harness hanging in front of you and a glowing red thing taped to your index finger. I had to get, um, creative. Washing my hands was interesting as well.

I figure I must have finally fallen asleep around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I woke up at 5am to use the bathroom again. The study was going to end by 5:30 anyway, so they just unhooked, unstuck, and peeled everything off of me and let me go.

They told me that they got enough data and that I had a couple of dreams, but I don’t remember any of them. They had mentioned that if it did look like apnea and if it was bad enough they would come in during the night and fit me with a mask to help me breathe. Based on the horror stories from my wife about how poorly I sleep I expected to have a mask within the first hour of the study. But it never happened. I hope they got enough data, because I am not looking forward to going through that again. The Sleep Study was the worst night of sleep I ever had.

A couple days ago I picked up the Nike + iPod Sport Kit hoping it would work with the 5th generation 80GB iPod I had just picked up. I was 99% sure it would only work with the Nano, but that 1% of hope forced me to buy it. For the record, the Sport Kit only works with the Nano today. Lesson learned.

Fortunately my wife has a 4GB Nano that I was able to use instead. I also do not have the official Nike shoe that has a place to store the device, but I just worked it under my shoe laces and headed out for a 2 mile walk this morning. I started walking outside this week because I just can’t stand using the treadmill and I really have to do something. All the extra weight is causing me to snore really loud and my wife says I stop breathing 100 times an hour when I sleep. I really don’t feel like dealing with Sleep Apnea right now, and since the main cause of it is obesity I decided to try to cure myself through exercise.

If you like to walk or go for a run you will really like this little device. It’s so small you never notice it is there and it is constantly communicating with your iPod while you walk. A piece of advice though, the first thing you should do on your first run or walk is calibrate it with a distance you know. I didn’t do that this morning and after my first mile my Nano said I had gone 1.14 miles. I decided to calibrate it for my second mile, and I’ll know how well that worked out when I go for my walk tomorrow.

After you walk or run, you can then sync your Nano and it will upload your data to the Nike website and you can track your progress and set goals. This is really pretty slick. I never cared about it when Apple announced this new device, but now that I have used it I think I am hooked. I’m looking forward to the next time I walk with it. I especially like how it talks to you. Nice touch. For me this was definitely worth the 30 bucks.

It’s hard to believe that 11 years ago Megan came in to our life.  Time is really just flying by.  It was exciting and terrifying all at the same time.  That’s to be expected with any first time parents, but Megan made things a lot more interesting.  She was born prematurely at 28 weeks, weighing in at a whopping 1lb 15oz.  She quickly lost 3oz and dropped to 1lb 12oz.  When you’re that tiny, 3oz is a lot of weight.

Valerie had preeclampsia and had to spend a couple weeks in the hospital before they had no choice but to induce labor or we would lose Megan.  We later learned that Valerie’s preeclampsia was due to a blood disorder called Factor V Leiden – she basically over clots.  Thankfully they learned all of this before we had Bailey, so Valerie had to give herself injections every day during that pregnancy.

Megan spent the first 56 days of her life in an incubator.  Every day we would visit her in the NICU.  I’ve never washed my hands so many times in my life, but it was all worth it.  It’s hard to believe looking at her now, but my wedding ring would fit on her ankle.  She was so  tiny – any furry!  At that age they have not yet lost all of their fur, so that was a little interesting.  That’s where she picked up the nickname of “our little monkey.”  It was weeks before we got to see her without all sorts of tape on her face from the tubes keeping her breathing and fed.

Today Megan is a beautiful, normal, goofy 5th grader that I couldn’t be more proud of.  I can’t imaging how boring life would be around here without her.  It’s funny, but all the headaches that came along with the “terrible two’s’ (and three’s!) are gone.  I barely remember that stuff now.

So Happy Birthday Megan, and a huge thank you to the staff at Magee Women’s Hospital for doing everything they could to make sure Megan survived.  We’ll never be able to repay you.

I made it to my dental checkup to get my regular cleaning. Normally my Dentist does the cleaning but he is now in an office where there are dental hygenists. So a very nice woman cleaned my teeth this time. It was an hour and 15 minutes of torture.

As she cleaned my teeth she asked me who normally does the cleaning and I pointed to my Dentist. “It figures,” she said, “they spend 6 weeks on cleaning and then move on to something else. We spend 2 years on this and get thrown out of school if we do it wrong!”

Well, I don’t know what my Dentist normally does while he is in there, but the hygenist decided it would be nice if she spent an hour of our time together beneath my gum line. A couple of times she said she could tell she was hurting me. I told her I was having trouble finding my “happy place.” It was an experience I’ll never forget and I guarantee you that you will not find anyone on the planet that is brushing, flossing, and rinsing more than I am so that I never have to go through it again. I even bought a Sonicare toothbrush and tried it for the first time tonight. The problem is it tickles until you get used to it so brushing is now an event.

I’m looking forward to the next checkup. She’ll find no plaque on me.

All month I have been walking on the treadmill for 45 minutes a day trying to do some form of exercise. It gets pretty boring, but I listen to the iPod or watch DVDs to pass the time. I decided to move over to the elliptical machine today to change things up a bit. 45 minutes a day on the treadmill did nothing to prepare me for the elliptical because after 7 minutes on it I was face down on the carpet gasping for air like a fish out of water. My wife cruises right through it for more than 30 minutes with no problems. Embarrassing.

As with most things in my life, I need incentive to get off my butt and do something. Weight loss is a funny thing. Last year we held the Biggest Loser in the Neighborhood contest and I did OK, but I am exactly the same weight I was last year at this time.

The repercussions from most of the incentives to lose the weight were mainly sad:

Do it for your kids.
Do it for your family
Do it for your health

Blah blah blah. I think I might have thought of the key this morning in the shower. I finally came up with something that doesn’t end in sad, but ends in mad. Really mad!

It goes back to the health thing but I always figured that I work really, really hard so my family will be taken care of. Bills are paid, nice house, some savings, retirement savings, life insurance. They’ll be taken care of if something would happen to me. Sad? Sure. But life tends to move on, people remarry, the sun will rise tomorrow.

Then it hit me. Wait a minute, it would be bad enough to have my wife remarry and the kids know someone else as Daddy. But no way am I going to let someone else come in to my life, live in my house, love my kids, drive my car, sleep with my hot wife, and spend my freakin’ money! No way.

Anger, a powerful motivator. Let’s see if it works this time.