Bit the bullet and called back to try again to schedule an appointment as the quality of my life has been steadily degrading due to lack of quality sleep.
Set an appointment for Thursday, August 22nd at 9:45 p.m. and arrived promptly at the door of the building at/around 9:42 p.m. The main glass double doors were locked but I found an intercom, found the number, then called. No response. Called again. No response. I started to get irritated when I saw a note from Advanced Sleep Services noting that the intercom was broken and I was to either call the technician or walk through the empty parking structure's second floor and take the elevator up to the 4th floor.
The parking structure is dark and deserted and scary and seems like a place maybe bad people hide and jump out at you and is dimly lit and there are few/no cars and signs everywhere that say "NO OVERNIGHT PARKING." questions fill my head: is the intercom really broken? does NO ONE get into the building after hours? has it been broken so long and is so impossible to fix that they'd rather put up a sign outlining how to bypass the intercom than to actually get someone to fix it? wait, you want people to walk through an abandoned parking structure that prohibits cars from parking over night while you're staying overnight, just to be able to access the main building? okay, sounds super reasonable.
after what seems like a scary eternity i find the elevator and make my way to the 4th floor where i am admitted after ringing a doorbell. a technician introduces herself, shows me my room for the night and gets me hooked up pretty quickly to the thousands of wires. she seems to know what she's doing and i feel a certain amount of competence and start to get more comfortable, like maybe, despite the so far terrible customer service, the janky entrance, maybe JUST MAYBE this will be legit.
a few notes: this is not super comfortable. there are wires on my head, on my body, on my ankles. she goes back and forth because something's not reading correctly and must keep attaching new wires (i blame the wires and not her). finally i'm settled in and i'm told it's like a 2-step study where the first half i'm monitored without the sleep mask and the second half i'm monitored With the sleep mask. Fine. what's Not fine is that there is the loudest vacuuming EVER and it seems to be either in the adjacent suite or the adjacent lobby but it's vooming around and hitting the wall, at one point hitting my wall so hard the headboard shakes and i audibly state, "SHIT." i understand this place is only open after hours and that's when the cleaning happens, but i kinda wish maybe it was located in its own building or something so that janitorial services don't ruin everybody's sleep studies.
As it is, i slept, awoke, had the nodes taken out, and weird gunks of vaseline-like substance in my hair, but now I await the results. Hoping hoping hoping they'll be more professional than the rest of my experience here. read more