Vital Sleep At North Austin Medical Center

I was called 3 days before the procedure to set up an appointment time. I was told NOT to arrive early but right at 8:30. I was told I would receive all the information I needed by email.
After a few wrong turns at night, I arrived late. I never received the packet of information.
I went to the St. David’s Austin Medical Center Emergency Room entrance as I was instructed by phone. Parking was plentiful at night. I waited at the Triage Nurse window for assistance… good thing I wasn’t dying or I’d have been dead waiting for service. The nurse was assisting another emergency patient.
Finally the nurse asked if I needed help. I said I was there for the sleep study. The nurse points me to a big closed glass window with NO sign on it and tells me I need to sign in over there.
The fellow there saw the nurse pointing and opened the window. The folks behind the window didn’t look too happy with their jobs and were not too excited to greet another patient.
I tell him why I am there. He tells another lady sitting far from the window to make the call cause that’s her job. She doesn’t look too happy to make the call. She calls the sleep lab technician and talk to that person for a while.
In the meantime people are sick and coughing behind me in the Emergency Room waiting area. Its dark and gloomy cause the lights go down at night in this part of the hospital. It’s like a movie on the Chiller Channel. One man looks really sick… or maybe that’s just the lighting.
Finally the lady tells me that because I’m late, it’s a problem because other people were already there and set up to go. By then, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I’m not going to sleep anywhere where the person staying awake is mad at me.
I politely tell her that’s okay. I tell both of them politely that the sleep study costs between $ 2200 and $ 4000. I’ll take my money somewhere else where the people really want it.
Their eyes open up wide. Maybe nobody ever told them how much money was being made just from the sleep study each night. Maybe 5 people a night. Maybe more. Maybe less. Maybe they making $ 10,000 or more a night. Yes, those eyes opened up real wide with that information.
The lady makes a half-​hearted attempt to get me to stay. Suddenly, things could be worked out. Nope. Nada. Not happening.
So, I’ll find another place for my sleep study. Good luck to those who get their study done there. My advice is to first get the call back number from them saved into your phone so you can call them back if you have problems getting the email or getting there on time.
Next, get there early no matter what they say. Better yet, find somewhere else where you are not directly exposed to really sick and contagious people. The earlier you get there, the more likely you will be exposed to sick and contagious people.
Had I known other people would be at the sleep study at the same time, I would have called the hospital to cancel the appointment. I thought I was helping to keep trying to get there. Instead all I did was waste gas, time, and expose myself to sick and contagious people.

DAy 1094: When? you have insomni a, you’re never really asleep, and yer never really awake. That’s what Tyler says. Awake. awa-​ke. Awa-​ke looks sort of hawaiian, doesn’t it? I remember that Hawaiian Punch dude from those juice cans. Didn’t his head look kind of like one of those puzzle pieces they drew to represent amino acid building blocks in biology? I think maybe it was the double helix close-​up. Not the photo, just you know. The drawing. I SAID th drawling! Not the photo. Rosalind Franklin took that famous double helix photo with x-​ray diffraction, yo, but she got shafted by the Nobel Prize folks because they refuse to award anybody posthumously. Bogus. Lookit, I spelled poshumosly right. Over. There.
dAY1095: I reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll ly had trouble conceiving what 3 years of erratic, but fairly consistent sleep deprivation would look-​alike, but now I have a pretty good idear: like thees [. . ]
Day1096: While I have had previous sleep studies, I was not sent to Vital Sleep to get a sleep study. Nop. I was sent to get an rEEG. I’m too tired to tell you what that is, or link it, so, you know what to do, intarweb dorkk. come on. type, you lazy bastards.
da1097: The NAMC is a monster hospital/​medical center, now operated by St. David’s, located at Mopac & Parmer, if you are not familiar with the place. In a place this freakin big you’d expect them to have a Frankenstein-​ishy lab where you just sit down in one of the hairdresser chairs and they hook you up and give you the juice, bam, yer done. But they really only have one small room in there, and it works similar to a sleep study, where you have to get electrodes attached to your head… but then you must lie absolutely, completely still for 30 minutes. You cannot open or close your eyes. Breathing only. No sleeping. Piece of cake! The tech who helped me there, Bonnie, was super nice, super punctual, told me exactly what was going to happen, and then talked to me the whole time I was lying there so I wouldn’t fall asleep.
This may all sound difficult to do, to y’all. But after you’ve had tubes and cameras shoved into every orifice for ‘diagnostic’ reasons, this thing was smooooth sailing. Smooth. Aw yeah. Ok you’re right, I haven’t had anything stuck in my ear recently. That I can remember…
DAY 1098: The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. I think.