Bad picture day

Okay, so Tammy made me feel guilty enough to finally sit down and do this! What's been going on in my life ...

About a month ago I had a sleep study done. A simple explanation of a sleep study is where you go to a sleep center, they hook a hundred wires to your body, jam a tube in your nose, strap a microphone to your throat, turn on a video camera, and tell you to go to sleep. If you're lucky enough to actually fall asleep in that environment, then they monitor you as you sleep. They track eye movement, knee jerks, teeth grinding, breathing, heart rate, oxygen levels, snoring, and so on.

The results came back a couple of weeks ago and it turns out that I have severe sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is essentially when you stop breathing while you're sleeping. It's typically caused by throat muscles relaxing as you enter deep sleep to the point that your airway is closed off. Your body has to wake itself up in order to start breathing again and so you never really enter deep sleep and never get as good of rest as you should.

It's pretty common to have some apnea's when you're sleeping. I think they said that they don't worry much if you have 10 or fewer in an hour. During my study, I averaged almost 60 an hour. The average length of time that I wasn't breathing was 23 seconds per apnea. So if you do the math, I'm only breathing less than 2/3 of the time that I'm sleeping. One apnea lasted 48 seconds and my blood oxygen level dropped to 80%. Kind of scary to think about!

So, to treat sleep apnea, there is a machine called a CPAP that pumps air into your nose all night long. The constant air pressure holds your throat open so that you can achieve a deeper sleep. Problem is, having a machine pump air into your nose isn't all that fun and not so conducive to sleep.

CPAP machines only work on some patients so I had to go back last night for a second study wearing a CPAP mask. It was a LONG night. Not only was I totally uncomfortable, but every time I did finally fall asleep, the nurse would come in and have to wake me up to fix something (a wire falling off or whatever). It was an awful night! If I opened my mouth on accident, my lungs would collapse from the loss of air pressure and a breeze would start blowing from my nose down my throat and out my mouth. They say you get used to the machine after a while and a lot of people that I've talked to that use them absolutely love them. They say this discomfort of wearing the mask is far outweighed by the benefits of getting better rest. We shall see!

So, here's the first bad picture of me for the day. This is me all rigged up with the CPAP jammed up my nose.


Enough of the bad news. Here's some very nice news, but an equally bad picture. For Father's Day and my birthday, my good wife bought me a brand new Lazy Boy recliner. She's of course in big trouble for spending way too much, but I love it! It is soooooo comfortable - I would sit there all day if I could! She had it sitting in the driveway and blindfolded me to go out to find it. I wondered if I was getting a new car when we went outside. Here's the picture...


Aside from that, my life ticks along at a hundred miles an hour getting pulled in every direction. But all-in-all I'm happy and am looking forward to getting a good night's rest tonight before I have to start wearing that machine every night!