I have sleep apnea. It’s never been officially diagnosed, but my wife knows all about it and tells me so. At one point, I dealt with this problem by tying a tennis ball into the rear of a sleeveless t-shirt. This makes it very uncomfortable to sleep on my back, which is the only time the apnea is a problem. I usually end up on my back as I roll around at night.
Lately I have been waking up dead tired every day, even if I get a lot of sleep. I need to either buy some new t-shirts and revive the tennis ball trick, or go have a sleep study and get myself a CPAP machine. The one that my wife used to use is in the closet, and she hates it. I hear they have gotten a lot better in recent years, looking less like a fighter pilot mask and interfering less with your movement.
I do hear that losing a lot of weight can get rid of the problem. This is something I’d like to do, but it isn’t really a short-term solution.
3 responses to “lather, rinse, repeat”
I have a CPAP that I do *not* sleep without. The following statement should be all you need to hear to convince you how good an idea it is: Since getting the machine, I no longer snore. At all.
Just in case that’s not a big enough statement, I also no longer wake up with nightmares, I no longer need two hours to wake up in the morning, and when I sleep, I actually sleep. It does take some getting used to, but I personally adjusted to it within a week and no longer even pay attention to it unless it isn’t there.
Probably time for a sleep study. I wonder how big a UPS I’d need to keep it going for if the power went out.
It’s not actually that big an issue. If the power goes out, you breathe back your own CO2 just like the paper bag hiccup trick, and you wake up. Apparently the body demands that you not asphyxiate in your sleep. So you wake up, take off the mask, then have the rest of what you currently think of as a normal night. It’s not so bad. Power blips you hardly notice – the power can be out for 1-2 minutes before you wake up, and when it returns the machine automatically restarts itself (pressure sensor in the line, knows when you’re breathing on the end of the hose).
As for what would be required, well – I’ve seen pictures of people who have rigged up a portable power supply so they can take their machines camping. Can’t take all that much juice.