My Sleep Apnea Chronicles

My Sleep Apnea Chronicles

Sleeping is good

It’s been just over four weeks now that I have been on my bi-pap Sleep Apnea treatment and I thought this would be a good time to give our readers an update on my progress. The state of the union is good, in fact I can’t remember sleeping as well anytime in the last three to five years.

It’s difficult to describe to someone who has been sleeping normally the difficulties associated with suffering from unhealthy sleep for so long, and then suddenly returning to healthy sleeping habits again - it’s amazing! I’m sure most of you have gone a few days during a tough spell at work or over a long weekend filled with partying too much - feeling what it’s like to experience sleep depravation. Imagine that feeling over a time period of three to five years, day after day after day, and progressively getting worse.

Each Saturday morning during this past month, my wife has let me sleep in. I can’t tell you the last time I awoke to an alarm clock that read 9:00am or even 10:30am., what a joy and surprise it was to wake up and realize I had slept the entire night, not awaking even once to go to the bathroom.

All during my previous sleeping sessions, I would wake up and have to go the bathroom, sometimes three, four, and even five times during the night. All along, I’m starting to think I’m beginning to have prostate problems like you might have seen on the TV commercials. The problem was, I was waking up so often, that I would have to visit the bathroom, just like you do when you first awake on a normal morning.

A few things I have noticed improvement with right away are: my ability to stay awake during the day and my caffeine consumption has gone to zero. I’m staying awake while riding in the car, watching TV, and even while talking face to face with someone. I can’t tell you how many times I have either dozed off or nearly done so while speaking to someone during a conversation. My memory is improving, and best of all, my ability to start and complete tasks around the house. I now have the physical stamina to finish the tasks and the mental desire to even do them.

My doctor has informed me that there may not be a "cure" for this condition, but most likely a life time of treatment in the form of using the bi-pap machine while I sleep. With loss of weight and some conditioning to strengthen my upper body muscles around my chest, shoulders, and neck, I should be able to improve my condition, but either way, I should be monitored annually with a sleep study to monitor my progress.

That’s fine by me, I have already started to lose some of the weight I had gained over the last two years, and I have checked off and completed several of the honey-do tasks that have been unfinished for some time now. I have to say, there is one major difference I have noticed about my sleep since I have been on the treatment, I can no longer hear while I am sleeping. Some of you with this condition may know what I’m talking about. When I would sleep, I could hear almost everything going on around me, never getting to that deep level of sleep. Now, when I go out, I’m gone, I can’t even hear the machine much less any other sounds in or outside the room I’m sleeping in. That’s a beautiful thing!

Until next time, here’s to a good night’s sleep.