Sleep study no slumber party

I had a sleep study done last month.

It was the second one I've had in about 10 years.

After the first one I had throat surgery.

Back then, I told a doctor I would rather have big hunks of flesh cut out of my throat than to go through another sleep study.

The surgery corrected my sleep apnea for a while but it has returned.

If you don't have sleep apnea or know anyone who has suffered from it, it's like undergoing waterboarding in your bed every night.

As soon as you relax and start to fall asleep your throat muscles relax, closing your airway, and you wake up gasping for air. Then you fall back asleep and repeat the process as often as hundreds of times every night.

It sounds like torture but the cure is, too.

The medical community has really dropped the ball in this area.

I thought sleep studies were medieval 10 years ago. I'm here to report they are no better.

It takes 45 minutes for a technician to attach electrodes to your scalp, face, throat, jaw, chest and legs. Elastic belts are wrapped around your chest and abdomen. Small tubes are inserted in your nose.

Ten years and the only improvement medical science has made is to put you in a nicer room. Have these sleepologists even heard of wireless technology?

Don't get me wrong. The Reading Hospital Sleep Center technician that got stuck with me was completely professional, courteous, respectful of my privacy and answered all my questions.

But you can only relax so much when you're trussed up like a Christmas tree - complete with blinking red lights - while someone watches you through a video camera and records your every move.

I can't sleep with a tight T-shirt collar around my neck, and I had at least two rubber hoses and a half-dozen electric wires draped around my Adam's apple. You have to ask to be unplugged to go to the bathroom.

And you tend to be more cautious about scratching.

The study showed I had significant sleep apnea.

But just when it looked like I'd have to go through a second study, my doctor hooked me up with a lifesaver, Manny Esch, a Shillington respiratory care expert, who hooked me up with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine I'm trying out.

After 10 years, I can't wait for this odyssey to end.