Sleep Apnea: The back story

My Sleep Apnea Personal History

First – my basic background – I’m 35 and I snore. My parents snore. My sisters snore. My brothers snore. And I don’t mean “they have a nice cute little snore like my toddler” I mean they have this god-awful unhealthy snore that kept me awake for YEARS growing up whenever I’d have to share a room with them (family trips, etc).

I have snored for many years. My college roommates used to yell at me because I’d keep them awake, as did anyone who ever slept in any proximity to me.

I weigh quite a bit more than when I was 17 and weight 155 lbs.  However, I snore the same now as I did when I was 17 and weighed 155 lbs. It is safe to say (in retrospect) that I have probably had obstructive sleep apnea for a long time.  I’m working on reducing weight but I highly doubt that will have much of an effect given how long I’ve snored like this.

However…it was never an issue for ME – it just annoyed those around me. That was, of course, until I got married – then it became a larger issue.

Let me preface all of this by saying my wife has been supportive and none of this is a comment against her – but the basic facts are simple. She went through a period of time where she had great difficulty sleeping. Any minor disturbance would wake her up – including me snoring.

Naturally, she would wake me up and ask me to turn over, etc, so I’d stop snoring.

Obviously this is a viscious cycle and we continually would wake one another up – or one of us would just accept defeat and go sleep in another room.  Obviously none of these approaches are good long term solutions so eventually I went to my doctor and he referred me to an ENT.

The ENT’s take on it…

The ENT wanted me to do a sleep study. Since I am fortunate enough to have good health insurance this was completed in short order. The results gave a clear indication of sleep apnea.

I would stop breathing for up to 60 seconds at time – I woke up 137 times in 6.5 hours – and my Oxygen levels dropped below 90. The other indicators were all conclusive as well.

During that study they also tried CPAP on me. I hated it with a passion. I had a LOT of trouble falling asleep with it and I had a sleep aid (ie, drugs) administered. What was worse was my reaction when I woke up. I panicked. I don’t think I have ever truly panicked in my life before but seriously – if you had taken the CPAP machine off and replaced it with a live squid on my face I don’t think I would have reacted worse. I woke up and started swinging at the thing to get it off my face.

I’m probably in some kind of “Hall of Fame” at the sleep center since they record every second of the process. “Look! Here’s Squidboy!”

Moving on….

I met with the ENT again and he explained all of the options. At my age I’m old enough to have run through several doctors of different types and I’d say he very good. He explains things well and was very patient. In his opinion/experience I was a very good candidate based on the shape of my face, mouth, throat, etc.

One thing I haven’t mentioned up to this point is my nose. I also have a deviated septum. I’ll summarize the story here and just say I smashed my nose into someone accidentally in college years ago. That was easily the worst I’ve ever bled.  Ever since then airflow on one side of my nose is about 20% of what it should be.

Although they do not think this is a contributor to the sleep apnea it is really inconvenient (Warning: Gross sentence ahead). I’ll skip the political correctness and just be blunt: when the airway is that small it tends to get constantly plugged with boogers regardless of your hygiene. (Gross sentence over).

So – on April 20th – all of that got fixed ( and by fixed I mean operated on – whether or not it worked needs more time…)

I guess the appropriate question to ask is this – what do I want to get out of this? I’d say three things:

1.) Ability to actually sleep in the same room as my wife without waking her up constantly
2.) To feel well rested again (I haven’t for years…but I also have a toddler so….)
3.) Be able to breath out my nose again

That’s my story – and I’m sticking to it. Feel free to ask questions.  The next part covers the actual procedure and after effects.