Geoff Had a Sleepover
I've just got home from spending the night at a sleep clinic. I have to say, I'm a bit tired now - sort of.
For a while now (read: pretty much since we met almost 6 years ago) my wife has complaining that I snore too loud and that I stop breathing for periods in my sleep. Me being me, however, I never looked into it.
For the last year or two I've been getting tireder and tireder. On long drives (read: more than about 20 minutes) on warm days, I can quite easily start getting drowsy when I'm driving. On the weekends I'll try (if jordie will let me :) to have an afternoon nap. And apparently I'm grumpy and/or cranky all the time (hence part of the meaning behind my domain name).
A couple of months ago we finally got around to doing something about it. I spent the night at a sleep clinic all wired up so they could monitor how I sleep and what happens. It's not a pleasant experience - so many wires hooked up to monitor different things.
If I recall correctly, there were about 10 wires hooked up to different places over my head and face to monitor different activites (brain, jaw movements, etc), as well a tube up my noseto monitor airflow. All the wires are attacked using glue. Then there's to the two wires on my chest to monitor my heart, and two bands around my chest and stomach to monitor mow much my chest and stomach move when I'm breathing. Oh, and a couple more wires (one on each leg) to monitor how much my legs move). And a clip on my index finger to monitor my pulse and oxygen level in my blood.
It wasn't fun - probably the worst night's sleep I'd had in a long time (barring nights with a newborn in the house :) - everything is just so damn uncomfortable that I kept on waking up all the time, and i was really tired the next morning. On top of that, since there were people there monitoring what was going on and stuff I had to wear pajamas! Damn I hate that :) But it served it's purpose though - they diagnosed me with sleep apnea, which is exactly what we figured I had. The best stats were when I stopped breathing. My best was 28 seconds (I think) without breathing in my sleep. My oxygen level was normally around the 90-95 mark, but once I stopped breathing it dropped to around the 60 mark (it's supposed to stay in the 90s).
It's sort of disappointing actually. I already knew a fair bit about sleep apnea because my father has it too. His longest time without breathing was around the minute and a half mark - I came nowhere close to beating him! :) But what it all comes down to is that I haven't been sleeping. Normally people have a few hours of REM/deep sleep each night, whereas I'll get one minute here, two minutes there, constantly interrupted.
At least now I've got an excuse to be cranky! :)
Last night I was back again. This time it was to sleep for the first time with a breathing (CPAP) machine. I was hooked up again to all the wires and stuff, although there was less on my face to make room for the breathing mask. It's a wierd feeling - this thing covering my nose constantly pushing air into me. I had a little play around - if I opened my mouth and stopped breathing the air would be pushed through my nose and come straight back out my mouth again. I figure if I purse my lips just right I could whistle non-stop.
The first half of the night went ok, apparently I got into quite a deep sleep for a couple of hours. After that though, I just started getting uncomfortable again. The clip on my finger actually started hurting a lot, and the wires started getting in the road again, and my bloody pajamas kept on getting twisted *grin*.
The hardest part of it all though was trying to breathe normally. When you breathe out you have to push back against the constant airflow coming in - so it felt like I was getting tired just trying to keep breathing. I guess it'll just take getting used to. Over the course of the night the people there monitored me and kept on increasing the pressure of the air coming out until my oxygen levels stayed where they should be, so by morning it was blowing quite hard.
On the weekend I'll be buying the stuff I need to run the machine at home. Once I've got that sorted out I guess I'll be cranky still for a while I get used to having the damn thing, but hopefully it will make a difference. And my wife can't complain about my snoring anymore - just the noise of the breathing machine instead :)
So now I've got to hit the showers and wash all the glue off my face and out of my hair, then we'll see how bad (or good) the night really was - we'll see if I can work all day without needing/wanting a nap.