Ye Undulations of Brain

The sleep doctor, my own personal sandman, has a background in neurology and thought it was a good idea for me to take a neuropsychological evaluation just to rule out any sneaking memory thieves other than lack of solid-ito sleepo. Fun! I am all in favor of anything that advances figuring out what the hell is wrong and where did my electronical mnemonical slap it in a box ability go? I bump through life like a helium balloon lost at the top of the ceiling, swinging from car wreck (have had 2) to nervous twitch. The doctor who led the interview was surrounded by three grad students studying to be neurodoctors themselves. Very nice young people.

It took two and a half hours to administer the testing, which consisted of things I am sure you have done before yourselves. The old "word red printed in green but you had to read it as red" game, the word red in a box then the next word green printed blue but you had to read the words in the box, then all out goulash with words printed in redgreenblue but you had to say the color of ink, not the word.

And oral recitations; first repeat the sequence, then the sequence backwards, then it was mixed up with alphabet letters and you had to number count the letters not the numbers. Then two personality tests if I thought people could hear my thoughts (no) or if I wanted to be a florist (sure). And then sequence recognition tests like the game you play at baby showers: lion, emerald, horse, tent, cave, opal, cow, sapphire and repeat as many back as you can, and picture recognition where you had to remember if you saw the picture in a sequence of fifty.

Really, they didn't ask if I believed in ghosts which I do but didn't volunteer that information as I thought it may come under the strange noises/hallucination question. And it wasn't strange at all, it just--happened. No questions came into the realm of psychic inclination, I figure because science generally wants to be able to manhandle the answer into tangible matter. Did I see strange things? Only if you count a cat not there about twice a day out of the corner of my eye. Do I know how I got to the testing center? Yes, I drove, but then on the way out I got lost and went up too many levels in the parking ramp stairwell cause nothing looked familiar and was it 3 or 5? Who is the president? I completely forgot Clinton. Obama, Bush, Bush, and do I know what the Sabres are doing tonight? No. Don't want to. Can't make me. You do it.

I get the results in the beginning of May, after the next sleepover performed at the center for further diagnosis, now that I am used to sleeping hooked up to this CPAP-amajig. Truly this approach is welcome, for no one is stuffing me with pills, in fact quite the opposite. To me this is medicine, looking for cause rather than going ahead and treating the symptom with all kinds of capsules that some get paid to prescribe. What has taken so long to find the root cause, is my gripe. Sakes, if I was tested for sleep apnea back in my twenties, would I have been a consumer of the many anti-depressants, sleep aids, wake-up aids, stop shaking aids throughout this life? No; and the medical establishment would not have made half as much money if all I relied on was a breathing machine.

So there it is, nothing to be frightened of, it all leads forward. Solutions hopefully, support and information at the least. I can't wait to get to bed. Did both federal and state taxes this afternoon, zip zip, in the mail. My little cat Kai is on the arm of the couch to my left, her ocean eyes edged in deepest brown, her breath marked by the movement of her flanks, her coat of mottled dappled pied umber over cream lifting and lowering with every small respiration. She is now washing herself, and Snowbelle has leapt to the other end; sphinxes, I am surrounded by sphinxes, I say. I see them both clearly, no cat phantoms in unluminous corners.

Things are winding down, Tulip is now aboard the couch ship, ready to sail off to dreams. They sleep early and will wake around nine tonight for a bit of chase and nip. Me? My heads hurts from backwards numbers and pictures of asparagus. I think some light reading will do fine until doctor sandman raises his beckoning finger, telling me that mechanisms of air pressure and water are waiting to pull me under the tide of dear sleep. You sleep well also, this fresh spring is filled with new energies that yank the green from down in the soil to up above. Time now for warm beds and wells of deepest distance. Sleep. Good, fulfilling sleep.