I enjoy gardening. The work promises a sore back, and every year the results are the same. Flowers of every color and hue adorn the shaded and sun drenched borders around my house, no matter the season. “Tedious” is just not the word for what I do every year in my gardens. For some reason the flowers spark wonder in me as they bloom forth, just like they did the year before and the year before that. As a sleep technologist, the flower of sleep rising from the fallow ground of sleep disordered breathing creates the potential of a similar wonder if I will just allow.
In the sleep lab we technologists test the same old problems every night, over and over again. Right? If you're like me, it's easy to get jaded, and the challenge is how to find new wonders in the same old things, night after night. We must dig deeply into the uniqueness of every situation. Granted, sleep apnea is sleep apnea is sleep apnea, but the circumstances of life with this disease manifest themselves uniquely in every case. During the set-up we try to get to know the patient, and in that process we might unearth some vital information on how the person we are serving deals with and suffers from his or her problem.
On one particular night, I remember when a fellow technologist had an 8 PM test appointment, but that patient did not arrive until about 9 PM. Now, most of us have struggled with the frustrations that rise when a patient is late for an appointment. Frustration is hard to deny, and it was obviously getting to my colleague on this particular night. However, when the sleepy patient finally did show up, he or she pulled a trick on my fellow technologist. The patient was likable. What nerve!
My coworker described the thaw of that cold atmosphere in the presence of a sad story—a life shredded to pieces by sleep disorder. The night progressed. Criteria for diagnosis were easily met. CPAP was placed. Then sleep, blessed sleep, came for (likely) the first time in years. That experience never gets old. The patient was so thoroughly asleep that the other tech could barely even get the patient turned in time to get that precious gold standard--supine REM sleep. It was…well…a wonder. How much had sleep eluded this poor OSA sufferer? What other things in his life had been affected negatively by the disease? How will those things improve when CPAP becomes the night time norm? I wonder.
Sometimes we cannot muster the wonder. It is just difficult. After all, we get tired too. Quite often the patient does not help us with a cheery personality. However, if we will remain open to it, a patient’s sleep just might open the door of wonder for us anew. Such wonderful finds can keep us safe from the jaded purgatory in which some health care workers suffer.