Hi friends and family,
This one has me wondering if I should be tested for Sleep Apnea. Although I don’t snore . . . much . . . (If I make a snore sound, it wakes me up). I do wake up, occasionally and reluctantly to use the bathroom but, that’s a bladder issue. When my urologist said there was nothing they could do about that except give me pills that work marginally at best, I said they must call this problem “Cranky-Old-Man Syndrome”.
Anyway, I feel I don’t get enough sleep to sustain me through a whole day, comfortably so I take an afternoon nap as often as I can arrange it. Just 15 minutes and I’m good to go. I feel refreshed and my mind is clear and focused. They say an afternoon nap is good for most people. They also say President Reagan took frequent naps to refresh his mind. It turns out there was probably more going on than just mind refreshing with ‘Ronny’.
I guess I’ll add Sleep Apnea to the list of questions/complaints I give my Primary Care doctor the next time I see him . . . Oh boy!
This story is more informative than amusing but, I hope you like it and maybe have some new thoughts to mull over regarding yourself or a loved one.
Thanks for reading,
David T
“My Nights Are On Oxygen”
By Don Tschirhart
Excerpted from the unpublished book “It’s a Wonderful World: A Retired Reporter Looks At Life“
My nights are on oxygen
For someone who spends nearly a third of his day sleeping I knew very little about this part of my life.
I wake up, stay awake for 16-17 hours, disrobe, dig myself under the covers and fall into a coma until the alarm or my Cairn terrier, Molly, tells me to wake up. Once or twice a night I wake up and then fall back to sleep.
Medical scientists say those who sleep less than eight hours are more likely to have major health problems — stroke, heart, diabetes. A while ago a radio doc said sleeping eight hours a night is also important to losing weight. A drug is produced during nappy time that slows appetites.
I learned about sleep after my lung specialist, Dr. Robert Go M.D., said, “You’ve got sleep apnea. It’s a family thing.” Go added there were a lot of people who have SA, but don’t recognize it.
My son, Kevin, had it and another son in Virginia will be tested soon.
According to an internet article on WebMD, obstructive SA disrupts healthy sleeping patterns and affects up to 4% of men and 2% of women.
The condition causes a person’s breathing during sleep to become irregular or briefly stop as the result of a collapsed airway.
And that “ain’t” funny at all. You stop breathing for a length of time and you may stop forever.
Researchers say SA is caused by a blockage in the nose, mouth or throat (airways) caused by bone-structure problems or enlarged tissues in the nose, mouth or throat.
SA prevents a person from reaching deeper stages of sleep, causing daytime drowsiness including falling asleep when driving a car.
What are the symptoms? Loud snoring, interrupted by periods of not breathing, frequent night awakenings, abnormal daytime sleepiness, weight gain, some memory loss, lethargy.
I had some of these symptoms, but they were masked because I slept on my belly.
Dr. Go insisted I be tested at a sleep clinic which I did last July. I put on my “jammies,” techs attached several sensors to my head, upper body and legs. That was one of the longest nights of my life. I kept waking up with the wires getting in the way of my arms and head movement. Often the wires came loose and they had to wake me to reattach them.
But the test did confirm I had SA. I kept denying it, but a few weeks ago I gave in, and had another sleep test at Lapeer Regional Hospital’s sleep clinic.
I went in at 8:45 p.m. and was greeted by two “personality-plus technicians,” who showed me my private room. After getting into my “jammies” Grace hooked me up, this time attaching the wires so they wouldn’t come loose during the night.
Kevin introduced me to CPAP, continuous positive airway pressure, commonly called “the mask.”
The comfortable mask fits snugly over the nose. A hose running from the mask is attached to an oxygen machine which produces oxygen silently at a regulated amount based on test results.
A half-hour of reading my book and I was ready for sleep. Kevin put my mask on and turned the lights out. Machines would record my physical changes. He would watch me on a TV screen
I think I was in and out of sleep the first two or three hours, but after that I settled down.
I was pretty much rested when Kevin woke me at 6 a.m., told me I had SA and asked a few more questions.
A stop at Horton’s in Lapeer for coffee and donuts and I was home at 7 a.m. An hour later I received a call from a home medical supply shop in Imlay City asking me to come in to be fitted for the mask. Kevin had faxed the information from his office.
The first two nights at home were not too comfortable. I woke up often to adjust the mask to my nose. The third night was much better.
A church friend has SA and assured me that after a week or two I would get used to sleeping with the mask.
“I won’t sleep without it now,” Art said. “I was told before the mask I was headed for a stroke.”
Kevin said anyone who snores loudly and their sleep is interrupted by periods of not breathing, wakes up often at night or doesn’t feel rested after awakening should talk to a doctor.
It could save your life.
You can get more information by typing Sleep Apnea into your internet search engine. * * *
