Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I'll Start With An Apology

This apology is directed toward anyone who has ever had to sleep within a hundred yards or so of me. Even if that entire space was filled with sound proofing insulation, I'm sure my loud snoring has managed to wake you up. My youngest brother recently told my fiancée that my snoring has woken him from two or more rooms away on more than one occasion. Needless to say, she had some concerns about trying to sleep through my private deforestation imitation, so a couple weeks ago I went to ask my doctor what the real deal with my snoring is.

The doc set me up to get a preliminary sleep study from which I learned that I snored 800 times that night and stopped breathing 11 times. Though he was pretty certain that this pointed to sleep apnea, he still sent me to a specialist to verify this fact. The specialist (ear, nose, and throat) is also fairly certain of that diagnosis, but also told me that my heartburn is frequent enough its eating my throat (Omeprazole is now one of my favorite chemicals ever). So this gets things up the present moment and my scheduled full sleep study tonight. The idea is that they will measure my brain function, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, breathing, and a bunch of other stuff for the first half the night, and provided sleep apnea is the correct diagnosis, they'll start up a CPAP machine and spend the rest of the night figuring out the minimum requirements to overcome the problem.

Can't say that I expect a terribly restful night tonight, but here's to hoping that outcome of it all is better sleep in the near future!

1 comment:

RogueHistorian said...

No kidding - could have told you that you snored. The only more annoying was when would leave that bloody alarm on.