Monday night was the big night — and hopefully the first step toward a long career of deep, silent sleep back home.

I wrote about my problems after midnight this past spring: For years, I have punched the sleep clock and put in eight hours of lousy rest and relaxation. I snore, I toss, I turn. My doctors figure I’m cursed with sleep apnea, and also figure I wake up dozens of times every night without remembering the interruptions.

The medicine men signed me up for an oxygen-pumping machine that has further ruined my evenings. I just can’t get used to thin plastic tubes that plug nostrils and push air into my respiratory system, which apparently takes part of the night off. I’m waking up because I’m failing to breathe, and the wakes are the body’s subtle nudges to resume the old in-and-out.

Hundreds of other people have the same problems. That’s why it took about three months for me to get an appointment for the all-night study at the sleep disorders center on the McClellan Campus of Ellis Hospital. I brought pajamas and pillows to the sleep wing on Monday, and began a nocturnal adventure with technology.

My tech was named Karen, and she and two other night shifters wire up six people three nights a week (another crew makes the connections on three other nights). The techs work from 6 p.m. until 7 a.m., and each one monitors two patients as they snooze the hours away.

I showed up at 7 p.m. — first guy in — and was shown my room. It looked just like a hotel room, queen-sized bed, tall wooden headboard, light green sheets with blue spread, two lamps on tables next to the bed. The windows were covered by mini-blinds, but they were just there for decorations. The glass is covered by some kind of black film, so no sun or moon light is allowed in. Kind of reminded me of the vampire hotel in HBO’s “True Blood” series.

I changed into black gym shorts and a blue “Daily Gazette T-shirt — I’m a company man, even after hours — and was quickly into the hook-up room. Karen attached some kind of goo to spots on my head, sticky stuff that held bunches of electrodes in place. Other electrodes, without the paste, were placed on my forehead, cheek and chin. Two more got places on my chest, two others got leg duty. In all, I was wearing 16 of these sensors; they would check breathing, heart rates and types of sleep experienced. If I kicked my legs during the night, the techs would know about it.

It took about 30 minutes, and the Frankenstein analogy came to mind. It wasn’t a new one, as Karen has heard people comment on the Karloff correlation before. She also has known patients who became so nervous during the “hook-up” process, they decided to disconnect themselves from both the wires and the all-nighter.

Click HERE to see my “hotel room,” Click HERE for some of my sleep aids and Click HERE for a shot of my altered, wired state.

The gear was uncomfortable at first, but the look was worse: I looked like one of those creeps from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the guys who are part-vacuum cleaner, part-car engine, part-Christmas tree. I remember Patrick Stewart got turned into one of the shambling machine men during the series run. Old Stewart looked like hell, too; but at least he didn’t look like he had lost a fight with a pot of spaghetti.

It was 8 o’clock or so, and lights out wasn’t for another two hours. That gave me the chance to commandeer one of the lab’s two television sets and watch the Buffalo Bills-New England Patriots football game, and answer a bunch of questions on a short sleep lab exam. Karen began to give last call around 9:45 p.m., about the same time the Bills were preparing to blow an 11-point lead and the game. I was sure the last-minute meltdown would become perfect fodder for nightmares.

By 10:15 or so, Karen finished decorating me. Flexible, Spandex-like belts stretched across my chest and waist for more sensory perception. Then came thin plastic tubes for nostrils to check my asphyxiation. A sensor tipped by a red light was taped to my finger .... so in addition to vampires, Frankenstein and Locutus of Borg, I could add E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, to my pop culture scorecard. Most of the wires were plugged into a machine about the size of a cable television box. It was called a “Sandman.”

A two-way intercom would allow communications — a call to nature would be both unwanted by Frankenstein and the support staff, as I’d have to unravel like a mummy first. A ceiling camera hidden under a black cone allowed someone to watch over me during the next bunch of hours.

The lights were out by 10:45 p.m., and I was on my dense, comfortable pillows from home. And while the rooms are supposed to be soundproof, a large ventillator-type machine in the ceiling hummed all night. I prefer to sleep without sound, and this thing just kept me awake. After 30 or 45 minutes, I asked Karen if anything could be done about the noise. She came into the room, but could not shut down the machinery. She said ear plugs were available, and after another hour of staring at the ceiling as the camera stared at me, I asked for the option.

I was still awake by 1 a.m., sometimes on my side, sometimes on my back. You can’t sleep on your stomach — you’d probably get electrocuted.

In the end, resistance was futile. I was on the nod by around 1:30, and let science take over for the next four hours. The control voice woke me at 5:30, and Karen was quickly in the room to release me from electronic bondage. There had been no sleep walking, no sleep talking, no gnashing of teeth. Snoring — yes. Probably a choir’s worth.

I filled out another questionnaire, and scored a coupon good for a complimentary cafeteria meal — scrambled eggs, home fries and bacon, breakfast of champions. Then it was off to work at about 7 a.m.

Numbers and graphs will be added up, and I’ll get the mission debriefing when I visit my sleep doctor on Sept. 30. I hope he says my new evening companion will be a smaller machine, with a jet pilot-style mask to force air into my lungs in the wee small hours of the morning.

I hope he doesn’t say, “You ... are ... going ... to DIE!”

That would also contribute to a bad night’s sleep.