Severe Sleep Apnea

Back in March when I was diagnosed with diabetes, I figured it was important that I get any of my other health issues resolved, because I meant to lose weight and get things under control so that I didn't wind up like the average person for whom diabetes shortens the length of their life by 20 years.

One of those issues that I thought I'd better check on was sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a condition where your throat relaxes too much while you are asleep, closing off your airway. Your body will then wake up, because you are suffocating, and your airway opens back up. Then go you back to sleep, and your airway closes off again, and everything repeats. Waking up dozens upon dozens of times throughout the night makes for a less than restful night of sleep. Getting no rest from your sleep makes for all sorts of other problems.

My father has sleep apnea, and some of my brothers do as well. My wife has always complained of my snoring...heck, My older brother complained of my snoring back before I was even in high school. So, yeah, I snore. That's one of the signs that you might have sleep apnea, and there are others as well. Being overweight, which I also am, is another one. Having diabetes is also another one...or maybe it goes the other way, having sleep apnea means you will end up with diabetes. Not sure about the chain of cause and effect on that one.

Anyway, I talked to my doctor about it, and he recommended that I try a simple test to see if it's likely necessary for me to go as far as doing a sleep study. He referred me to a place that called me up, and brought me out an oximeter to sleep the night with. This is just a little clip that you wear over your fingertip that checks the oxygen level of your blood somehow...don't ask me how, I have no idea how that works. After the oximeter results came in, my doctor said it was worth it for me to get the full-blown sleep study. So, he referred me to an actual sleep specialist.

They sent me home with an oximeter, plus several other things, like a strap that went across my chest and measured some stuff...I don't know, maybe whether my chest was expanding and contracting to know if I was breathing or not....also a tube that I had to tape right under my nose that would feel if breath was coming in and out of it.

It was kind of hard to sleep with the oximeter on my finger for that first test, but this one, with all this stuff on top of the oximeter, was much more difficult. I managed, however, and when the results came in, the sleep specialist told me I didn't just have sleep apnea, but extreme sleep apnea. When I slept on my side, I only stopped breathing about seven times an hour, but on my back, I stopped breathing around 105 times an hour. That's twice a minute, and I spent three hours of the night on my back, falling asleep, closing off my breathing tube, gasping awake, and repeating, over and over and over again.

So, they set me up with a CPAP machine. (No, those are both P's, and yes, I did have fun taking a pen off the desk and altering one of flyers at the sleep center to say, "Having issues with your CRAP?") CPAP stands for continuous positive airway pressure. What it does is push air into your throat while you are asleep that creates enough pressure to hold your throat in place. It can't close off your airway when you relax, because the air pressure keeps it where it belongs.

I was afraid it was going to be loud and obnoxious, and I would never hear the end of the complaints from my light-sleeper of a wife, but it's not that at all. In fact, my wife has had nothing but praise for it, because I don't snore anymore. Shoot, even my daughter, who sleeps way down the hall with her door closed has remarked on the fact that I don't snore...so, that gives you a little bit of insight into how bad my snoring was.

It can be a bit of a pain. I have to attach it to my face with some straps, and it goes over my nose like this:

And I thought the sleep test stuff was annoying to sleep with. But I've been wearing it for a little over a week now, and I'm getting used to it. Sometimes there's issues with it coming off in the night, and it's much harder to sleep on my side with it. All in all, though, it's been a big improvement. Hopefully, by getting all this amazing, uninterrupted sleep, I'll have all sorts of energy to do things like exercise and eat right, and get my body in shape so that the diabetes doesn't bring my life to an early finish.