Living with Sleep Apnea

That’s what I thought seven years ago after a sleep study to assess a deep and lingering fatigue. Otherwise strong from a life of athletics it seemed crazy that despite sleeping 12-18 hours a night a little bit of snoring would create such drag. Besides, it’s hard to discount the oft chanted mantra of almost everyone around us including the medical community to explain such symptoms: You work too hard, you’re under stress, you travel too much, you don’t eat right, you need to slow down and so on. Why, there are so many other good, adoptable explanations that one needn’t wear a mask at all. So, as breathing was unimpeded when sleeping on my sides I opted for sleep behavior modification to keep me off my back and snore-free. Follow up assessment? Downstream complications? Perhaps the need and potential wasn’t indicated in the dark ages, wasn’t effectively delivered or emphasized, or perhaps simply failed to root in a sleep deprived mind. Besides, it wasn’t causing any actual pain the way ailments must to earn their place on one’s jammed agenda, and surely it’d give me that fair warning before leveling it’s impending doom. And Who’s got the time is such an acceptable dodge these days, right? Whatever And yes, before you ask, empirically measurable impairments of judgment are also symptomatic of prolonged fatigue, whether induced by apnea or any other cause.

In any case, the fatigue seemed perceptibly abated with the new sleep habits, magnified I’m sure by increasingly regular exercise following surgeries needed to attenuate old, deteriorating injuries. Physical therapy broke up scarring accumulated in connective tissues and neural sheaths. Knee surgery fixed a track injury. And most amazingly, spinal surgery in 2005 not only arrested further damage from a then recent soccer injury, it unexpectedly resolved an old sky-diving injury, fully eliminating continuous, sometimes debilitating back & leg pain for the first time in 25 years! I was getting more consistent and strenuous exercise (I like to call it play) than in the last 22 years (a period also correlated oddly enough with the birth and rearing of our three children. Hmmm). I’d always been highly competitive, always in the top athletic tiers among my contemporaries (at least within the shores of a decidedly small pond) and even among many others years younger than I (whose numbers continue their maddening increase as the decades drift by). Now largely injury free, I was gaining momentum and eagerly looking forward to punctuating the 2nd half of life with athletic tests amongst those who’d managed better than I to remain competitive through the previous decades.

Fast forward to the fully present, and despite other improvements the sleep thing had deteriorated significantly. I’m snoring every which-way, awakening from suffocating dreams, dozing off daily more urgently than ever, struggling with increasingly irksome short-term memory and organizational issues and resulting frustrations, and WHAT THE HECK, starring into a hyper-frigging-tension reading! Like any good kid over fifty I have an annual poke; prod (if only for the staff’s gratifying affirmations of general good health) and occasionally cuff up to a monitor within whichever pharmacy I’ve followed my good-half. That’s where I sat late last October when my first-ever reading above low-normal rang up stage-2 hypertension A little self-monitoring later and I’m bouncing back & forth between my GP (Canomalous EKG) a cardiologist (eventual aneurism; don’t want that surgery; gotta take it easy now on) and sleep/neurology doctor (come in April 10th to fit your beddie-muzzle). Crud, never thought I’d live to see the day (ha ha) when I’d buddy up with the phrase “my cardiologist”, who’s restricted me to: Lifting nothing over 25 pounds, ever, and avoid any lifting at all when possible; A rather bland diet totally at odds with my moral code; Popping beta blockers; Et cetera. What an enormously deflating kick in the self-identity!

The point: You got a good life? Plan to live it to its utmost? Feeling pretty great about the prospects? Unlike me, get an early clue. If you’re on this site, you suspect that you or someone for whom you care has apnea symptoms. Look at the symptoms seriously, as though they have a real and likely downside, because they do if left untreated. Resist our culture’s tendency to brush them off or look the other way hoping things won’t get worse, that the symptoms will give fair warning if things do worsen, or thinking if they do they can be fixed later with no permanent aftermath. Get a consult, get tested as indicated, take someone who’s rested, alert and who cares about you to hear the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, follow the plan, and don’t wait. Remember that time is apnea’s slow, persistent ally, not yours.

And remember too that life is great! I get fitted for a CPAP in a few weeks and hungrily reach for the much anticipated cascade of physical, cognitive and life improvements. I can still exercise aerobically with swimming, biking and hiking (though range is more limited due to the 25lb ultra light limit). And while the beddie-muzzle ain’t going to win my wife’s vote for most alluring man alive, at least I can slap it on, sit up in bed and play Walter Mitty over Iraq* until we both fall asleep!

*Walter Mitty Over Bagdad is scored as follows:
– Points for Literature - 1 Point for knowing who Walter Mitty is, 2 points for knowing his story’s built around his daydreams of epic heroics, 3 points for linking this game to his particular fantasy as a heroic bomber pilot over WWII Germany
– Points for Cognitive Flexibility 2 Points for shifting the scene from historic WWII to contemporary Iraq.
– Points for Visual Acuity 1 Point for visualizing the CPAP mask as a state-of-the art combat pilot’s oxygen mask
– Current Affairs 3 points if you imagined Mr. Mitty as a Bone Jock, another point for knowing a Jock is a combat pilot and a Bone is a B1 bomber (B-one, get it?), 2 more for knowing the Bone is the only bomber Mr. Mitty would imagine in any technically accurate contemporary fantasy and why (all the B-52’s and B2’s have been recalled), and one bonus-life point if you never call the Bone by its official name (Lancer) in the presence of a Bone Jock.
– Points for Entertaining Arts 125 Points if your own imaginings were sufficiently amusing as to make you want to wear a CPAP mask even though you have no apnea. Add 50 points if your imaginings induced actual fun.
– Points for Humanities - 500 Points if you still have epically heroic fantasies (tsk, and at your age)
– Bonus - Add another 1000 points if you are in fact the Walter Mitty (and if so, you might want to check in with your wife as she’s been trying to reach you for some time now)