To Sleep, Perchance to Entangle

Way back in October I did a sleep test, and it turns out that I’m doing it wrong.

I know. You’d think I’d know how to do this by now, having had more than half a century to practice it, but apparently even this simple task is beyond me these days. At some point I will simply be amortized out and sold for parts.

In the meantime, I have been given a Machine.

It is a little Machine, roughly the size of a loaf of bread if you include the reservoir that has to be emptied every morning and then filled up again every evening. It’s surprisingly quiet. It has bright lights that go out eventually and several buttons that make a satisfying click when you press them. It automatically connects to the nearest cellphone tower and reports on whether you have used it, for how long, and under what circumstances. It may also echolocate the cat and report on that as well. It needs to be cleaned on a rigid and unforgiving schedule. And right now it is making me very, very tired.

The good folks at my local medical purveyor started texting me about this Machine a few weeks ago, but since I don’t answer texts or phone calls from unfamiliar numbers it took a while for this fact to sink in. Eventually they were succinct enough in the texts that I could see their point in the preview screen so I wrote back and after some stilted conversation they eventually said they had one of these things for me but I needed to come in to get trained on how to use it.

So we set up an appointment which I then canceled so I could go tailgating (total regret about this fact: zero) and then rescheduled for last week.

On the appointed day I ducked out of work a bit early and headed over to what I had previously known as a bar but which now houses the medical equipment people – and no, I am not making that up – where I met an enthusiastic fellow who spent the better part of an hour telling me how much my life was about to be revolutionized by this wondrous Machine.

“You won’t understand how you lived without it!” he said. “Prepare for the best sleep of your life!”

This turned out not to be true.

I think he could tell that that vast majority of the enthusiasm for this transaction was occurring on his side of the desk which seemed to sadden him, but I did promise that I would give an honest effort to make it work and I do believe I have kept this promise as best I could since then.

Still not true, though.

I didn’t use it the first night as it requires a supply of distilled water that I did not have, but a quick trip to the local grocery on the way home from work the next day solved that problem. And then I had to get it set up.

These things are a lot simpler when you’re looking at one on a desk and a genuine Machine enthusiast is walking you through all the parts and procedures. When you’ve got one at home and you’re staring gimlet-eyed at all of the various bits and bobs trying to remember what end was up and how it all connected together, it is rather more complicated. But eventually I got it all lined up and connected and even figured out how to put the little mask on. Because you have to wear a mask.

There’s about a hundred different sorts of masks. Did you know that? I didn’t. Not until last week, anyway. There are masks that are just little tubes that you stick up your nose. There are masks that you could use to explore shipwrecks of Spanish galleons off the coast of Florida. And there are different masks for pretty much every step on the gradient between those two end points.

I hate having things on my face. Masking up for the pandemic was a genuine drag, though I did it because I am not an idiot and didn’t feel like sacrificing myself or my loved ones so some psychotic grifter could score political points for his re-election campaign. This is called enlightened self-interest, folks, because sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to achieve a larger goal. I know. Life is hard, but there you go. I am capable of doing things I do not care to do if there is a purpose to it, which is how you know I am an actual Adult.

So I picked one that just rested under my nose but left my mouth uncovered. I get one free change, though.

Eventually I got the tube all snapped together and – after about fifteen minutes of topological mathematics – figured out how to get the apparatus connected to the mask to clamp onto my head. The tube back to the Machine comes off the top, in case you’re wondering, so I look like a post-apocalyptic unicorn and now that’s an image you have in your mind too.

It’s actually not that uncomfortable if I don’t move, though if I open my mouth the air that is being gently forced up my nose immediately comes down whatever the little pathway is for that and exits out my mouth, which is really, really disturbing. Once I have this thing on I have to keep my mouth shut, and there are people out there who would tell you that this is worth the price of the Machine all by itself though there has to be an easier way to get me to do that, I think.

I can fall asleep with it pretty easily most nights if I start on my back. But the problem is that a) I sleep on my side, not my back, and b) I rotate like a gas station hot dog while asleep. The Machine Guy dismissed this out of hand. “Your body is just trying to compensate for the very problems you came in here for this Machine to solve!” he enthused at me, his clothing and verbal intonations slowly morphing to look and sound like the Wizard of Oz. “Once you have this, you won’t need to do that!”

This turned out not to be true either.

For four of the last six nights I have strapped myself into the Machine, laid down on my back, and with surprisingly minimal fuss drifted off to sleep. And then two hours later I rotate onto my side, get entirely tangled up in the tube, wake up, try to get back to sleep while resting my face on the apparatus, spend some time attempting to reset the mask which by now has slipped over toward one or the other of my ears (which is surprisingly unhelpful, really), try to find a different position that might work, and then take off the mask, turn off the Machine, and – eventually – go back to sleep for whatever is left of the night.

All of which gets reported to the Machine Guy over the cell phone system.

Kim sleeps through all of this, which is how you know we’ve been married a long time.

The Machine Guy called me on Monday to see how it was going, despite already knowing this thanks to the snitching of the Machine, and he seemed unhappy when I actually told him. So on Thursday I am going back to the local medical purveyor’s office at what I still think of as a bar if I am being honest, and I’ll see if a different mask will make any improvements.

I am not sure how all of this is supposed to help, to be honest, but I am giving it a genuine try.