sleep apnea update

[johncomic]

this is probably the most interesting part of the whole lab test:

i was supposed to go to sleep at 11 and they would wake me at 6. i woke up at 4 and couldnt get back to sleep... at home i woulda just got up and gone online or something, but here i was wired up and i figured i owed it to them to stay in bed for the whole thing... so from 4 till 5:30 i tossed and turned, shut my eyes for a few minutes, then peeked at the clock to see if any minutes had gone by yet, etc... at 5:30 i finally got back to sleep for a little while.

the lab report tells a somewhat different story:

between 4 and 5:30 i was quickly falling asleep, my breathing stopped, after a few seconds i began choking and gasping and woke myself up... then immediately fell asleep and did it all over again... over and over for 90 min

so what i perceived as being solid non-sleep, uneventful and tedious, was in fact filled with little bits of sleep and bits of me struggling to stay alive... you wouldnt think something like that could happen without you having any awareness of it, but trust me

anyhoo, i felt like hell when i woke up, but under the circumstances i guess that makes sense...

(i get the final lab result analysis in march, so no updates till then...)

PS: the mattress at the lab was the most comfortable one ever!! :) :)

Comments

[angelamermaid.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, now you've got me wondering more and more about my own sleep problems. I know that sometimes when I nap, I wake up feeling that I've stopped breathing and that's what woke me up.

What made you start this process, I mean how did you end up in a sleep lab?

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

just dumb luck that sharon finally happened to be awake while i was having an attack that was longer than just a passing glitch... she said, "you stopped breathing then started choking, over and over again, like about twenty times"... if i had been more familiar with the warning signs of sleep apnea (http://clos.net/forms/sleep_apnea_form.htm), i wouldve contacted my doctor a lot sooner [word to the wise]...

[angelamermaid.livejournal.com]

The form won't finish for me - maybe because I don't have a Social Security # - but those questions scared me. 8 of them I could say yes to.

I think I will go call my doctor!

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

good girl! (that was my point, just that you see the questions and get some idea of what you should be wary of...)

lemme know how you make out with it...