Sleep, that's right! Sleep!
Did you ever get out of bed in the morning and feel unrested?
I spend a good eight hours in bed every night and I never feel rested, EVER.
My neurologist suspected something was going on.
I obviously wasn't sleeping well so he set up a test to find out why.
A sleep study is what the test is called.
I went and had a sleep study.
I lay in the bed looking at the back of my eyelids for what seemed like forever before sleep finally came. Who could blame me really! The room is nice but with the camera on the wall over the bed it was slightly icky. The wires that the sleep technician has attached with some glue like substance were hanging off the back of my head and I looked like a demented monster with a braid. ( I actually have a picture of myself and it's so bad I won't even include it in this post for fear it will scare the readers away)
The results…
I have obstructive sleep apnea and hypoapnea as well. During
my test my breathing either stopped fully or partially (for an average of 23 seconds
or more) or slowed so much that my blood oxygen levels dropped dangerously low a lot.
How many times could something like this happen in one
night, you might wonder?
Basically I had 102 respiratory events (apneas hypoapnea’s)
and 290 arousals which are basically abrupt changes in the level of sleep or
from sleep to wakefulness. It’s a wonder
I’m not a walking zombie every day.
What does this mean to my health?
This basically means I’m
at risk for all sorts of health problems if this is left untreated, the biggies
are heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, headaches,
diabetes, sudden death, obesity.
Crap!
CPAP have you
heard of it? It will probably help me with my problem more than cussing but
saying it made me felt good anyway. CPAP
is an acronym for continuous positive airway pressure and is the recommended
device for my condition. It’s basically a little machine with a mask that
pushes air gently thru the nose and down the airway to keep the passages open.
Once the doctor and the insurance company sort out all the
details I’ll have one more sleep study to get fitted for a face mask and for
them to figure of the pressure of air required to stop my events during
sleep. But I’m hopeful that …
Before long I’ll be sleeping like a baby.
