Posts Tagged ‘sleeping’
Russian Technician
I finally figured it out. Our cat has a gift like that Russian sleep clinic technician and now everything makes sense. I now understand her crazy obsession of pummeling us with kneading paws in the early morning darkness when we least desire her affectionate attention. Pequenita is the Russian sleep tech from Cyndie’s tales of being tested in a sleep lab years ago.
First, she was told to stay awake for ten minutes while wearing the cap of countless wired sensors. Cyndie describes looking out a window and around the room to pass the time. Looking at a magazine. How hard is it to stay awake for ten minutes? Then the grumpy countenanced Russian technician’s voice came over the speaker and told her to wake up.
“I’m not asleep.” she claims to have said.
But, she was. He saw her fall asleep in about 30 seconds. He made her try again. Multiple times over the 24-hour period of testing, they played that little game. She says she failed every time. What startled her was that she felt like she succeeded every time. She didn’t think she was falling asleep.
This discrepancy of perception worked both ways with her sleep cycle. The objective is to have the patient stay awake when it is time to be awake, and stay asleep when it is time to sleep.
In the morning, Cyndie describes her battle with the Russian technician’s voice over the intercom.
“You need to get up now because you are awake.” His words grabbed her attention.
“I’m not awake. I’m still sleeping.”
“No, you’re not. I can see your brain waves.”
This guy knows what sleeping brain waves and awake brain waves look like. It’s what he does. He could clearly see when her brain woke up.
I don’t think Pequenita is perceiving our brain waves, but I think she detects that same moment when our brains wake up, yet we think we are still sleeping. That is why her treading paws on our heads is so annoying. We are trying to remain asleep. She knows that we are not still sleeping.
I think it is our breathing that she detects. Even though we have no intention of waking up yet, there are moments in the sleep cycle when we transition out of deep sleep to what I would describe as semi-conscious. For me, it is often occurring when one of my arms has fallen incredibly numb and I need to switch positions. There is also the very obvious situation of a full bladder, which I am extremely grateful to be alerted to so I can remedy while maintaining dry sheets. Sometimes, it is a result of a vivid dream experience.
My first guess is that Pequenita hears the change in our breathing as our brains wake up. I expect our body movements are another easy clue.
When she steps on our heads in the early morning hours before we want to wake up, I now think of her as our own little ornery Russian sleep technician letting us know our brains are no longer asleep.
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Tight Tenting
On Wednesday, our bike trip destination was Lake Bemidji State Park. We arrived in time to eat lunch there, before the baggage truck had even delivered our gear. Since this park did not have a group camping site large enough to house all our tents in one location, ride director Bob divided us into two groups.
Even at half the number of campers, it looked like we would barely fit. The tents were going to need to be set very close together. Luckily, this group knows how to do close.
Since we didn’t yet have our bags with the tents in them, people began to claim their plot by laying down their bicycles in the spot where they hoped to erect their tent.
By the time the truck with our luggage arrived, impending rain was beginning to threaten its arrival. The area behind the truck took on the appearance of an airport baggage claim station as folks took turns stepping in to grab their gear the second it appeared.
In a flurry of expert efficiency, our tent city popped up very quickly.
In this situation, it was going to be very difficult to achieve much in the way of the isolation we value for reducing auditory sleep interruptions that happen at close quarters. Tent fabric is a very poor sound dampening wall material. We share every cough, sniffle, burp, fart, hiccup, and snore that human bodies are prone to do.
Actually, the more onerous irritant often doesn’t come from our bodies, but from our equipment. Tent zippers, noisy sleeping pads, and plastic storage bags can make an incredible amount of ruckus after it gets dark and voices have grown hushed.
My friends, Rich and Doobie, got creative and tucked their tents with mine between some bushes on a teeny strip of green between driveways.
Any port in a storm.
We were so close that our rain flies were tied to each other to keep them from sagging onto the tent walls. It is a good thing we didn’t get much more rain than what fell, because there wasn’t a very good route for water to drain away from the middle spot where three rain flies all sloped together.
I’m happy to boast that I don’t have much trouble with these tight conditions, because I am always so exhausted by sunset that I fall unconscious asleep very quickly and miss all but the most egregious clamoring that sometimes can occur in the middle of the night.
When I do happen to notice a particularly loud snorer, I tend to return to sleep easily while pondering how in the world individuals who make loud snoring sounds don’t wake themselves up when they are so close to all that noise.
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Relative Something 