Sleep deprived EEG

What is this I hear you ask.

Well what happens is for a 4 year old, my son is 4 and a half he will have you know, you have to keep them up to midnight and then they get to go to sleep for four hours. After this you have to wake them up and they need to stay awake until the appointment. Our appointment was for 9am, with the test lasting for two hours. The reason they want him sleep deprived is to have him sleep while they perform the test.

Keeping him up was ok until he did fall asleep for about a minute and I had to pick him up make him walk around and give him sweets. We also had his favourite programme on, Top Gear and he played Race The Stig when he got really tired. When we got to midnight he fell asleep so fast, myself on the other hand I finally fell asleep at 1am but it was not a peaceful sleep as my son snores! (an ENT issue which I will update you about at a later date)

The alarm soon came and it was a struggle to wake my son. In the end I picked him up and made him walk until he was fully awake. I offered breakfast but he didn't want any, but he did accept a milkshake. I then put more Top Gear on to try to keep awake.

Then at 6.30am it was time to wake up my daughter and get her ready for school. Now that she was up it was easier to keep my son awake. We dropped her off with our neighbour who was taking her to school. It was now us in the car on the way to the hospital. This was the longest journey ever trying to keep him awake, we had the windows open and he was playing Race The Stig.

Once we got to hospital we had a wait before going in for the test but my son found some very noisy toys to play with. It was then time to go in, this was the part he didn't like very much. Electrodes were placed on his head and he was placed on a bed. By this point he really didn't want to stay and tried to get up, but we got him to stay and the lights were turned off and the Dr left.

After about 10 mins my son tried to get back up again and the Dr came back in. We decided that my son would be better to go to sleep on my lap. So in the most uncomfortable chair I have ever been in he was placed on my lap and the lights were turned off again and I tried rocking him to sleep. This time it worked and an hour and a half later I had dead arms, I didn't realise that he twitched so much while he slept. The doctor came back in and asked me to wake my son up, it took a little while but we got there in the end.

After all the wires were taken off we were allowed to go home. I should have the results in seven to ten days.
He was given a certificate for his bravery which he insisted on taking to school to show his friends.