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Keswick scored an 82.53 on Travel + Leisure’s Top 500 Hotels, one of only two Virginia hotels to make the list and one of a small number without “Ritz-Carlton” or “Four Seasons” in the name. Cheers!
Popularity: 3% [?]
Tagged as: Albemarle County, Central Virginia, Charlottesville, Local Business
Kinda off topic, but I can’t resist because of the Keswick connection and the graphic, which was exactly what I imagined in my mind when this story transpired…. if you’ll indulge me. If this is too long, feel free to bahleetit
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I was tired. I am always tired. I have been tired for so long that I have kind of adjusted to that simply being the norm. For a good chunk of my life I always thought that it was because I smoked so much damn weed, but its been years since I have been on any sort of regular chronic schedule, so thats out. When I moved to virginia eight years ago, I became an amateur alcoholic to, you know, kind of fit in better with the locals (when in rome), so perhaps it was the alcohol preventing my harvest of deep rem. But even when I don’t drink, I still wake up feeling like I haven’t slept at all.
Now two decades of sleep deprivation will take its toll. I am scatter-brained, forgetful, have trouble concentrating at work, and just generally roll through life like not all my cylinders are firing. Some people find this endearing, in a nutty professor kind of way, but most folks are just annoyed. I myself am increasingly falling into the annoyed camp. So I have been thinking about it all. And as I did, something occurred to me. Everyone I have ever had the pleasure of sharing a bed with has said something to the effect of “Jesus Christ dude, I thought you were gonna fuckin die last night! You stopped breathing for like a minute!” or… “My god, you snore so loud I had to seal my ears with resin, wrap my head with towels and move out to the couch and still I heard you! Fuck!”
It would seem, would it not, that such dramatic and pertinent assertions of various nocturnal shenanigans would have been somewhat more in the forefront of my mind when wrestling with sleep issues. But like I said, my brain don’t work good, and it kinda just all clicked one day recently. I have sleep apnea. I am an apneatic maniac. The poster child of such, as such. So after hitting the google on the internets and discovering all the wonderful ways this particular disorder can fuck up your life short and long term, I called the doctor.
My doctor said that there was a remedy for my afliction, and that it took the form of “a machine”. For the duration of my diagnosis, it was referred to as “the machine”. In my head I was conjuring up all sorts of mechanical monstrosities that would soon be necessary for my to take my rest. From the classic hospital ‘machine that goes ping”, to various mideaval configurations of wooden gears and bellows - i was hooked to them in my imagination. “The machine”. Lord, is this what I had become? I imagined telling my children ala starwars… I am your father, but Im more machine than man now…” I wondered if the machine came with any add ons, like maybe one that made me speak like darth vader. Perhaps I could start calling myself the bionic dad! Hmmm…If I was going down this route, I was going all the way.
At any rate, the doctor convinced me that this machine, and the blissful slumber it would provide, would change my life in the short run and possibly save my life in the long run. I was seduced. I would lose weight! I would be able to concentrate and become, once and for all, a good little worker bee. My professional career would take off! I would be able to remember meeting people, and maybe even remember their names! I would feel good all the time! Sunshine! Unicorns! Free candy! Peace in the middle east! All mine! But of course, like all things medical, this rapture would come at a price. And no small price, either. The machine is close to two grand. Ooof! But no worries, says the doctor, it will be covered by insurance if we only get you to jump through some hoops. Merely a technicality, I was assured. Some blood work, which comes with everything on the doctor’s menu - and a “sleep study”. Oh my friends - the hell that those two words would come to reflect was so unclear back in those heady days of my blissful ignorance. I will elucidate.
After a battery of blood tests to see if my thyroid and other glands had fallen into some sort of chemical delinquency, which, having been raised right, they were not, a sleep study was scheduled. It was explained to me that I would be wired up, would take my rest and, easy-peasy, i would be measured and then my machine would be provided to me for the mere cost of a co-pay. Awesome, thought I, working for TJ’s plantation does have some perks after all.
I received the informational packet in the mail the following week. It was from the “Keswick Sleep Institute”. Oooooh… Keswick! Now being a Belmontonian low these last eight or so years, I had never been to “Keswick”. I don’t know if its a place or a neighborhood or a building or what. I do know that some significantly wealthy people live there. Seeing as I am merely white trash once removed, I always have had the vague sense that I was not permitted to go there, so I sort of wrote it off as one more physical example of the the profound class stratification present in this area and paid it no more mind. But now I was invited! An honored guest! In my mind I pictures hanging gardens, delicate fountains, private balconies with sweeping vistas, perhaps a cheese plate… who knew? The possibilities were limitless! The rooms had tv’s and other amenities to make my stay comfortable. I went from apprehensive to anticipitory in the mere time it took to read the brochure. Sure there were lots of rules like no drugs or alcohol… but hey, they seemed reasonable. And surely I could live without my nightly nip seeing as I was to be lain in the sybaritic lap of luxury that only the Kingdom of Keswick could provide. I counted the days with bated breath.
Soon enough, what has come to be known as black tuesday arrived. I was to be there at eight to be fitted with my “unobtrusive monitoring equipment”. Hmmm. I better check the maps on the google to make sure I can find my way in such foreign environs as Keswick. It was then that I got my first inkling that things were not as they seemed. The address I typed in did not return directions to some sort of rural shangri-la, but rather a location that was situated on that increasingly balding lump of retail, business and mccondos known as Pantops. Ah Pantopia. Home of Rose’s. If ever you wanted to know what shopping in the Soviet Union in the late seventies was like, thats your place. But I digress.
Unfortunately the google is never wrong, and I soon found myself with my overnight bag standing in front of a nondescript box of a building behind the Applebee’s. I had to knock on a side window to get someone to let me in. So much for the crushed velvet red carpet I had by this time conjured up in my mind. The office was a typical clinical affair, with corporate art and various frosted sliding glass windows. I was introduced to some of the staff and then shown… well, the box. It was in truth, actually a room, but it certainly felt more like a box (a feeling that would increase exponentially in the wee hours). Bed. TV. Nightstand. Lamp. And…. thats it. So sterile it was… so far from my conjured eden. But oh well, I assured myself, this is a medical environment not the Four Seasons, and if I must face the box to get the machine, then so be it.
I was asked to get myself into my sleeping clothes so the “unobtrusive monitoring equipment” could be applied. I usually sleep as god made me, but I had come prepared with my best version of pajamas that my wardrobe offered. I sat on the edge of the bed. It was then that they showed me my first glimpse of “the machine”. Not much to look at really, a beige box with a couple of buttons and a hose coming out. The assistants then went to great lengths to show me and have me try on the various nasal attachments. Turns out all the machine that was to cure all my ills merely blows air up my nose at a constant pressure. I was a little bit disappointed, but who am I to blow against the wind, as it were. But I was not going to wear the machine until later, I was told. First I had to be measured.
It was then that I was introduced to the “unobtrusive monitoring equipment”, which looked, well, rather somewhat obtrusive, truth be known. There was a black box with some forty or so gold tipped color coded wires spewing out. This box snapped into a corresponding box that was cabled to the wall. As I digested this electronic harness a cart laden with a cornucopia of implements of discomfort was wheeled in. Straps. Cups of adhesive. Syringes. Tape. Solvents. A razor! Gah! What had I signed up for? The chances of a cheese plate were becoming more and more distant. But I manned up, and if I had to endure the spanish inquisition to obtain the utopia that the machine promised me, then endure I would! Damn the torpedos!
Then the technicians set upon me. It rapidly became clear that one was training the other, as many of the procedures had to to be repeated. And what procedures they were. My head was measured and various “landmarks” were etched with grease pencil into my scalp. They began gluing electrodes to my head, my eyes, my chest. They shaved patches into my leg hair and ran wires through my clothes to diodes on my legs. Everything was glued and taped. Then these electronic bands were velcroed around my chest. A small sensor thing was inserted into my nose. A microphone was taped to my chin in such a way that it sat one inch from my lower lip. I made small talk and made dumb jokes, which is what I do when I am profoundly nervous. The whole process took about an hour. By the time they were done I was quite sure that the next step would be to strap me to a table and raise me up through a trap door in the roof to wait for an electrical storm. I could not imagine the kindly tech cackling “I give you liiiiife!!!!” but I was sure I shortly would not have to imagine it.
I was freaking a bit and needed a cigarette. I had been told that accommodations were made for smokers, but this turned out not to be the case. Oh well. I wanted to send some pix of my predicament to friends but nope. No cell phones either. My main box was plugged into the wall box and it was bed time. 10:15 pm. Its all good I thought, I will just zone out on the tv, lay still and eventually I will nod off. I could hear a man’s voice in another adjacent room, which I thought was odd. I laid there and watched an episode of MASH, which I remember as being much funnier than it seemed. Then, at eleven or so I was told that It was time for lights out. Um… what? Yes. Promptly at eleven I was to turn the tv off and the lights out. This was a very bad turn of events. I mean, why the fuck even have a tv, if one is only allowed to watch it for twenty minutes. I never naturally fall to sleep before midnight. So there I was, in a completely soundless and lightless room, wired up like a popular mechanics experiment, stone cold sober, nicotine fitting out of my bean and Completely. Wide. Fucking. Awake. But you know? The fun was just beginning…
I lay there taking stock of the situation, wondering how in the world to fall asleep, for close to two hours. It is bad for me to be in situations like this. The only thing standing between me and epic and complete ego disintegration is the magical power of distraction. I like distraction. I like so much that I am not even particular what form it manifests. All of the powers of creativity that I have, I owe to my constant cultivation of distraction. I now found my self in a situation where even the distraction of movement had been largely stripped from me. So, naturally, I began to confront my mortality, and other fun mental exercises that have driven greater men than me to drink and ruin. But after such a series of cruel misdirection and tricks, the fates decided to throw me a bone and I fell asleep. Not good sleep, but it would do.
I figure I had been asleep maybe a little over an hour when I was awoken by the technician. And why, in a sleep study, was I awoken you might ask. Fair question. I asked it myself. As god is my witness I was awoken and told that I was going to have to “try to have more apnea episodes harder”, that “at the rate you are going, you are not going to pass the insurance test to get the machine” and “maybe if you lay on your back”.
Apparently, I was failing to have my disorder successfully. Now I have failed at many things in my life and I accept them. But this was not one of the items I had foreseen, nor wanted to add to that list. Upon reflection, that moment in the dead of night in my box on the ass side of Pantopia Mountain, I imagine I felt like I knew what it would be like to wake up in the hospital after failing to commit suicide. I was instantly consumed with various layers of rage. Why had they woken me up to tell me to sleep deeper? Why tell me that I am failing before the night had even ended? It was like telling a cancer patient “At the rate that tumors growing there’s no way you’re gonna qualify for chemo… you wanna be a sport and step up the metasticization a little there, champ?” At my wits end, I took to gesticulating my impotent rage wildly in the darkness and muttering expletives into the microphone that was taped to my throat to record my snoring. The last throes of a desperate man. I imagine this went on til about four a.m. when I finally exhausted myself and fell back into fitful slumber.
I was awoken promptly and unceremoniously at six a.m. felling very much like I had been run over by a car. I was disconnected from the apparatus as I was offered platitudes of forced pleasantry and deliberate vagueries as to the results and quality of the data collected. I knew what this meant. No machine for me. I was told that my doctor would contact me in 1 or 2 days, but that didn’t happen. I stumbled out into the what I mistook for the red glow of dawn, but which was really just the light from the Applebee’s sign, and got in my car and went to work, though I had quite forgotten what was on the agenda for today.
I don’t really blame the techs, or the institute… I am sure they were unprepared for my particular flavor of lunacy, and I did set up an unreasonable expectation in my my mind. But still, to pass through such a trial and all for naught seems rather sad. I don’t know what will happen next. I suppose I will go on self medicating, while working on my idea of reversing the polarity on my vaaccum cleaner… who knows… with a little duct tape, maybe I will be able to rig it to my face and catch that good night’s rest at long last. But until then, please forgive me If I don’t remember your name. I am very tired.
You should look into getting a UPPP surgery. I had all the same things happening to me for years and recently got the surgery and now i don’t snore anymore and sleep awesome. If you want to make yourself apnea more during the test, have a couple beers before you go despite their recommendations. I imagine the times these people spent the nights when you were choking, you may have had a few.
Dr. Powers is great for surgery, but you would need to redo the sticky headed slumber that is oh-so next to impossible.
or on topic….
I am floored that Keswick made the list. It is NOT well run. First experience: arrived past midnight on my wedding night - in dress - waited thirty minutes for someone to show up to check-us in. Absoultely noone at the door… I had to use the phone at the desk to rouse someone from wherever they were sleeping. Second dissappointment was that they did nothing special for us at all as honeymooners. Nada. No note, cheap champagne, flowers, room upgrade not even a “congratulations” I was pretty surprised and dissapointed. (and we stated when we made the reservation that we were coming for our honeymoon night)
2nd experience, I visited a friend who was staying there over the holidays and we tried to order room service - it took over an hour for chips and beer to arrive. come-on people, that’s pathetic. And we had to call 3 times to get status reports. And this wasn’t a busy w/e, or during a wedding - or during dinner hour.
My impression is they train people to be really nice and “formal” but don’t have the operations figured out.
Oh, and did I mention that the toilet wouldn’t flush and there was no hot water in the shower?
Get it together orient express!
belmont: that fuckin sux. You need to report that shit to the Fearless Consumer. That’s bullshit.
B’yo…. I can hear you snore from my house. Great writing … sad but great.
Keswick Hall… fab place to go and have afternoon tea on the verandah. I go every year for Bloomsday(James Joyce’s bday) and talk to other Europeans about our latest sightings of obscenely fat people.
Follow up: And now they are saying since I “failed” and had “no condition” that I owe more than my copay. I just got a bill in the mail three months after the fact!
I don’t snore *always*, just sometimes… its more the ’stopping breathing’ thing that is worrisome.
And when I do snore, now I just stuff this BIG red cloth thing someone gave me at a gig once in my mouth so floozy can sleep.
B’yo …. ever the gentleman. Are you ever ever going to get over this or do I have to carry out some bizarre penance to assuage your annoyance?
I could come to the wine tasting dressed like a gorilla? What do I have to do to make you happy?
I’d dispute the coverage with your insurance company, B’Yo. Your doctor thought you probably had a condition. The test was to verify the condition. I shudder to think what we’d all be paying out of pocket if we had to foot the bill for every test that came back negative. That’s why they do tests, to begin with!
Not as bad as your ordeal, but I remember being fitted with a continuous blood pressure cuff for 24 hours. It was supposed to take my pressure during regular intervals and record it for the med techs to evaluate. Theoretically, the cuffs give better results over time and avoid the “white coat” pressure spikes people get when all antsy in a doctor’s office. Well, not for me. During the day, the damn thing would inflate twice an hour. Very, very loudly, scaring the bejeezus out of me (increasing my blood pressure, I’m sure, by a very measurable amount; awesome design, guys!). It also squeezed my arm until it turned blue, waiting a good thirty seconds after that before it deflated. They had the thing set to only go off once an hour, overnight. Whoop de freakin’ doo. Only being awakened every hour? How lovely! Particularly for someone already suffering from insomnia. I tore the damn thing off before the test was completed. The torture wasn’t worth the (no doubt) inaccurate data they were collecting.
I was just trying to turn it back into a joke (for myself), rather than the soul crusher it was (due entirely to poor timing, not your twisted sense of humor, of which I am rather fond).
No Penance neccessary. I will officially never mention it again.
Peace?
Make her wear the gorilla suit, B’Yo!
TG…. thanks Sister
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