Living with Sleep Apnea

For the last five years I have been living in a fog. It took me a long time (too long) to figure out why. I recommend if you are the “canary in the coal mine” at meetings and are doing the head bob - get checked out at a sleep clinic: It may save your life as well as your career.

For me, the fog started around the time my daughter was born: the sleeplessness - the constant buzz in the back of my head - that nebulous feeling of unease and the need for a few moments of decent rest. I chalked it up to being a new parent and the usual (and altogether wonderful) experience of being a Daddy even if it came with a few sleepless nights.

Soon, my daughter settled into a fine nightly routine and we started working on our second. I always found an excuse for the drowsiness - I became, as I am inclined to do, accepting of it. “I can’t change it, so in good Irish fashion, accept your lot and get on with it,” I’d think. I took the fog in stride, wore it like a badge of honour: My burden, willingly taken, to join the other fathers in the great Paternity!

After my son grew into normal hours of sleep, my marriage dissolved. My family moved back to Ontario, while I stayed in Toledo to work. Driving every weekend to see my kids the 5 hours from Toledo to Toronto. I would wake up at 3am to make the drive Saturday morning to be at the house when the kids were ready for the day and do the same on Monday mornings to get to the office in Toledo. The fog persisted, but I chalked it up to the driving this time.

I lived this way for about a year before taking a position back in Toronto (there’s nothing like a winter of driving down the 401 to convince even the most stubborn of people that this was a timebomb waiting to go off). The new position, however, required extensive travel as the business expanded globally further into Europe, Mexico and China. I would be gone for 2 weeks a month and I found a new excuse for the fog: Jet Lag. Around this time I started catching every cold that there was available to be caught. Someone in the next room would sneeze and I’d catch it. I was begining to think my immune system was failing, and my road life of restaurant food and travel was to blame.

For 2 years straight, I’d land from one trip to arrange the next, see the kids breifly, then off I’d go. I was in a fog to be sure, but I thrived in the chaos (at least mentally). The life of a corporate solver was appealing jumping into the thick of it wherever the business was difficult and wrestling with the problems that inevitibly creep into any global expansion.

Finally things on the business front looked stable enough for me to take a month off travel to catch up on my life. I hadn’t seen my local friends in ages and my kids needed more Daddy-time than the 5pm-8pm window I was giving them between trips. The first week or so, I was noticing that around 3pm and 7pm I was being overcome with drowsiness. I joked with the kids that I needed a Siesta and was getting old, but at the back of my mind the fog was thickening. I could almost feel it as a pressure in my skull, and sleep wasn’t making it better. Coffee had always been my crutch at these times of the day, but even that was not evaporating the mist.

I was confused. At every point over the last 5 years, I’d had an excuse, something I could blame for my tiredness. This was new. I took a few vacation days to try to “catch-up” and settle in to this time zone. Things got worse, not better.

The Irish in me faded behind the fog long enough for me to admit this one was beyond me to solve with grit, guts, and blood. I needed to see a doctor - I had not been in 6-7 years since I had a physical at the corporate sponsored clinic (they were protecting their investment in their aging leadership caste, but I was fresh to the ranks of Directors and was young to get the nod).

The sleep clinic was part of a battery of tests the good Doctor lined up for me. I chuckled to myself, “I don’t need a clinic to tell me to eat right and exercise…”. I had bought myself a top of the line elliptical machine, and XBOX360 and a 42 inch HDTV to get the exercise I needed and was eating like a rabbit when the business allowed it, my weight was coming down (nothing near yet what it should be, granted, but at least going in the right direction, for a change).

The diagnosis was unexpected - and I blew off the call when the nurse called to set up a follow up appointment at the sleep clinic. “I had probably knocked some of the probes off during the night,” I figured, ever one to find an external reason for bad news as a defense mechanism - It certainly could not be a defect with ME. “I will only come in for another test if there is some form of direct action that can be taken from the result. Measurement without action is waste,” I told the poor nurse on the phone, citing my favourite management catch-phrases. I agreed at the end of the conversation to talk to the doctor about the results and options.

The Doctor at the sleep clinic woke me up. His diagnosis was simple. My blood oxygen levels were falling dangerously low (72%) during the night due to obstructive sleep apnea, and I was courting heart attack and stroke nightly as my diaphram sucked harder and harder against the blockage at the back of my throat to get air. I was expecting to be told to sleep on my side or to not drink cafienated drinks in the afternoon, not “Mr. Smith, if you do nothing about this, you may not survive to see your kids grown up.” I signed up for a second study with a nasal mask to counter the obstruction.

I have been running around like an idiot for at least 5 years. I urge you, if you have triggered any of the symptoms to do yourself the favour of a night at a sleep clinic.

Matthew.