Our New Toy

No. I'm not in labor and no, I didn't have the baby. Now down to business

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OK, so some of you know I always complain about how badly B snores. And he does, my goodness does the man snore. I think few people have a true appreciation for how snoring affects the PARTNER! So finally I forced B to see an Ear, Nose and Throat (heretountofor the "ENT") about his sinus issues, the sleep apnea, and the snoring. Poor guy is ALWAYS tired, snores like a frieght train, and SWEATS all night long, all symptoms of sleep apnea and/or respiratory distress during sleep. Well, We saw the ENT a couple months ago and he put B on a little regimine of twice daily sinus rinses and twice daily nose spray to see what happened. After a month B went back, having experienced SOME limited improvement from this and had another exam. What the ENT found was that not only does B have an abnormally large Uvula (dangly thing in the back of your throat that keeps food from going up your nose when you swallow) but he also has nasal (and probably also sinus) pollips. The ENT is a surgeon, so he immediately started talking about doing UPPP Surgery and a procedure to remove the pollips. The first step before the UPPP surgery would have to be a sleep study, so we signed up for that to find out how bad the apnea was. In the mean time, we did some research on the surgery and decided that the results were not consistent enough, the surgery was too extreme, and the long term benefits were total crap and that we would definitely go for CPAP first if we could.

So last Monday B had his sleep study. He describes it as an all together miserable experience, and I can only imagine. Poor guy already sleeps like crap and then they stick a bunch of stuff to him and put him in a strange room. It was not a good night for him. BUT, we did our follow up with the sleep doctor earlier this week and finally started getting some answers. Baris has what is called MILD sleep apnea, but the catch is that he has 70 to 80 obstructive respiratory events (apnea, hypopnea, mixed apnea, and snoring etc) during the night. During some of these episodes his oxygen saturation drops as low as 84%. For a normal adult this number should always always always be well over 90%. So this explains his chronic fatigue, sweating, and tossing and turning. The sleep doctor is NOT a surgeon and told us that while the UPPP surgery is an option, it only has like a 50% success rate and there are a number of drawbacks (which I already knew from research, and believe me, they are too great to list here). He also explained CPAP and dental devices. CPAP has pretty much a 100% success rate for those who are able to use it. The only problem with the CPAP machine is that about 1 in 4 people simply cannot stand to sleep with it on their faces. We decided to go with the CPAP, since the dental device also has limited success and has the potential to jack up his teeth. We got our orders for a CPAP and immediately called to set up our appointment with the CPAP people to get set up. That appointment was yesterday.

I was SUPER excited to get to this appointment with B and subsequently to go to sleep last night and try this thing out. Right now B is using a really sophisticated machine that is recording data throughout the night to determine the right pressures for his permanent machine (which we should get in about 4 weeks after our trial period with the super CPAP is up). This one changes pressure as it senses that B is having an "episode" and stays up at that pressure until it's no longer sufficient. It resets to it's lowest setting every morning when he turns it off. B was told to sleep on his back (which he loves, because I won't let him for all the snoring) and wear the CPAP as long as he could.

SO, B slept with the CPAP on ALL NIGHT LONG last night. And I'll tell you I anticipated him feeling much better this morning, especially when I woke up a few times (afterall, I'm still 9 years pregnant) to find that a: he hadn't moved all night, and b: the mask was still on. He doesn't seem to mind having the mask on while he sleeps with the exception of the occaisional condensation dripping into his nose and waking him up, we're working on solving this, it's complicated. He woke up this morning at 2am, he said, and was already ready to face his day! But he forced himself back to sleep. Both of us woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 4:30am. Neither of us could get back to sleep. I thought this might happen to B, but I didn't think it would happen to me. I haven't slept so well in YEARS!

Let me break this down for you. B and I have been married nearly 5 years. In that 5 years, neither of us has had a decent night's sleep because of his snoring and apnea. This has affected every aspect of our lives. We have no energy so we don't get as much done, don't have good focus, don't have the energy for exercise on a regular basis unless we FORCE it, and (sorry if TMI) our love life has suffered horribly. The sleep specialist said we would suddenly stop wanting to sleep all the time, and without even trying we would both probably start dropping a lot of weight because our bodies are working more efficiently and have more energy to burn off the weight. Given our newly rested selves, it's probably safe to assume (especially as evidenced by this morning's gung ho start) that most of our other "energy" issues will come around and life will get much better. JUST IN TIME FOR BABY!!! LOL. In addition, because these respiratory episodes have such a huge impact on B's heart, his endurance should improve (B was never able to get up to the full on run of a 5K back when we were training because his heart and lungs just wouldn't let him, no matter how diligently he trained) and he'll be able to get back into the shape he wants to be in.

I can tell he's very happy this morning. I am too. Not only do I feel a MILLION times better after our sleep last night, my husband is all bright and rested. The bags are already nearly gone from under his eyes, he woke up fresh and chatty, and he really feels good. This is great, and the timing couldn't be better. I think baby would have SUNK us if we hadn't rushed to get this CPAP before the birth. I told B he had to do it because we were going to be losing sleep with baby, and with our poor quality of sleep to begin with, neither of us would be able to function at all. I have renewed hope.

What a fun new toy. If you are or sleep with a snorer...get a sleep study. This is changing our whole life! All that's left now is to learn more about these pollips, their risks, and what they mean for his overall health. We'll get there.

Your well-rested and loyal reporter,
Megz

PS: Another tip, put a damn humidifier in your room. We learned from the sleep guy that breathing dry air causes your nasal passages to swell shut, and it can take days for them to open completely again.