Living with Sleep Apnea

For me it was a gradual thing. No one knew about sleep apnea.

The first thing i remember is going to sleep at night and waking up almost instantly because i would feel like i couldn’t breathe. I started to sleep on my side with my fist under my chin. that seemed to help for awhile.

Then i started doing stupid things in my sleep. i woke up brushing my teeth with diaper cream, another time i had wrapped all the kitchen cupboards in toilet paper, to say nothing of the time i woke up laying on a hunk of cheese that had flattened and made a huge grease stain in the sheet. I didn’t remember doing any of this.

Over the years all the energy i had seemed to slowly seeped away. There were times when i would fall asleep and my husband swore he tried to wake me up but couldn’t. I didn’t believe him until i watched a full 2 hour video tape of him talking to me and trying to wake me up. I talked to him in the tape as though i was understanding him but I didn’t remember any of it.

There came a time, probably around 10 years after all this started that i became very very ill. I was put in hospital and for awhile i wasn’t sure i was going to make it. My lungs were so infected. After about 2 weeks they sent me home with a nebulizer. Keep in mind that i had slept in the hospital for 13 nights.

I hadn’t slept for more than 45 minutes in years. My legs and feet were swollen and painful to walk on. I continued to “fall asleep” almost every time i sat down and sometimes i would wake up with horrible headaches. I started having anxiety attacks sure i had a brain tumor.

I read an article about sleep apnea in Readers Digest but it really didn’t have much impact on me at that point. I was really too sick to know i was sick.

One night i was using my nebulizer and fell asleep. Well those machines are made to go in 20 minute spirts and i slept for 5 hours (unheard of for me). Unfortunately or fortunately it turned out for me, i blew a fuse and had to call a techie in to fix it for me. Being the social animal i am, as i was talking to this man and told him how id had the best sleep in years and could he put in a heavy duty fuse. It was at that point he mentioned having my doctor do a oxygen saturation study, that i might have sleep apnea.

I dug out the readers digest and read the article again and then made an appointment with my doctor. He agreed to refer me to have the study done although he admitted he knew nothing about sleep apnea.

An appointment was arranged and a very nice lady came to my home on a Friday night with a little machine. She told me when i went to be all i had to do was turn it on and clip the little thing to my finger and each time i got up for any reason to write down the time. No problem.

Next morning, Saturday, she comes to collect the machine and called me about an hour later saying that she believed the machine had malfunctioned and would I mind repeating the process again that night. Again i followed directions and on Wednesday of the following week I received a call from a respirologist I had never heard of telling me he needed to see me immediately. I told him the best i could do would be friday after noon around 2 p.m.

When my husband and i went into his office he began to explain something about a machine i needed and that although the government would help, it would cost me around $500. At that point i explained that we were not in a position to afford that but when we were we would get the machine.

He immidiately picked up his telephone and requested his receptionist to get Social Services on the phone. Within minutes he was speaking with someone who from what i could gather was telling him there was no one there to give permission to pay my portion of this machine I needed to have. I distinctly remember the exact moment i realized how serious this was. It was when the doctor stated that should i die over the weekend he would be in court with my husband and sue him, his boss, and the city. I had my machine by 5 p.m. that friday afternoon.

That night when i went to sleep, i went to sleep. I slept for a solid 9 hours and when i woke up. i had ankles and i peed longer than i can ever remember before or since. From that day on, i recaptured my life. I figure i lost the last year.

Some interesting facts…

during my sleep study, i stopped breathing hundreds of times that night. At one point I’m told i stopped breathing long enough to stop my heart beating for 8 seconds. The first machine hadnt been malfunctioning, that was me.

After about a year, i started noticing my husbands sleeping and it turned out he also had sleep apnea. We became a statistic: one of three couples in our province with sleep apnea. Sadly he passed away a year ago due to heart problems.

Twelve years after I was diagnosed my family doctor retired and he called us in to give us our files and to have our final visit with him. He shook our hands and thanked us for all that we had taught him over the years.

I think the thanks should go to Readers Digest…….