Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Sleep Clinic Challenge

     When I started blogging, this as the fourth post I made. I found out that nobody read this post because I didn't have any readers so I decided to post it again.


    Last Friday night I slept at the sleep clinic . Now sleep clinic is an absolute misnomer as you don't get much shut eye . However , the sleep clinic is the end of my story .

      How did I get to the sleep clinic ? Was it when my daughter slept in the same hotel room and complained the next morning that she had a very poor sleep as one of us snored (my wife of course ) and the other choked . Was it when my children were infants ? Was it stress from my work ?

    Well, let's start from the beginning . I was born in 1939 to a young farm couple who had a very meagre residence ...three rooms ...no insulation or central heating . Eleven and one half months later I had a baby brother and by the time I was two years old I also had a little sister . My poor mother ! But that's another story . This one's on sleep . I can remember the three of us sleeping in one bed which wasn't crowded as we were little . As children we slept soundly even though three little bodies rolled and thrashed around and occasionally fell out of bed .
Later a new house was constructed and we had our own rooms ! Sleep was great . I was young . The house had central heating and was insulated .
I left after high school to attend college and lived in various boarding houses with shared accommodation . I did wake up from time to time with noise from other roomers coming and going . I changed localities very often in my early twenties as I taught and went to university . I spent three years in a very noisy single staff accommodation were there was much coming and going through the night . I remember being awake as I would hear people coming and going in the hallways . Sometimes there were all night parties .

    I lived in a remote northern settlement were my wife was the nurse . She was on call twenty four- seven . Many nights she was required to attend to a sick person . We weren't in the habit of locking the house door until people walked into the house and into the bedroom to get the nurse .

     Children arrived and took my attention . I felt a great responsibility for the welfare of my children while they were infants .Hungry , cold or ill children had to be looked after . Teenage children were another thing . From a young age my son liked movies . He would try to sneak downstairs to watch a movie and would get caught . He said ,"Dad, I never got downstairs to watch a movie . You always caught me ."

      My children left home , but my interrupted sleep became worse . For many years I have set my thermostat so that the furnace does not come on after bedtime as I found a running furnace always awakened me . Through all of my poor sleep patterns I never felt fatigued and was always a morning person . I never needed an alarm clock .
In January of 2006 I began to feel fatigue and found it difficult to rise in the morning . When my daughter made the choking observation , I could immediately think of sleep apnea as I would be waking up with a jump . In 2007 My family physician referred me to a sleep specialist . The sleep specialist ordered a sleep clinic experience .

     So there I was last Friday evening . Now the sleep clinic really wants to see how badly you sleep so they wire you up from head to toe . They will miss nothing . Sensors are attached to your shins and arms . A belt is put around your chest and another around your stomach . A box about twice the size of a mouse is attached to each belt . All these gizmos are firmly attached with liberal amounts of plastic tape . They tell you you can sleep in any position ...just try it!  Then they say ,"Have a good night!"

     As you can well imagine I did not have a very successful sleep . It's not easy sleeping in a strange place with all kinds of material attached to you .
I have not received any results from this ordeal, but I would rather go through the investigation as it is well known , that sleep apnea can lead to many health complications . What happens with sleep apnea is you stop breathing and oxygen levels decrease and your blood pressure rises . The combination can lead to other health problems so I will put up with the discomfort as it may prevent other options which are not positive .

     So , Friday night in a sleep clinic !!! Kind of a bad joke !!!!

18 comments:

  1. I can relate Keith.Went through the same thing only at the Wetasiwin hospital a yr ago after Bette_Jo spilt the beans about me not breathing when I slept. Yup,not much sleep with all the rigging.

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  2. Sleep apnea can indeed be a serious problem... and I think it keeps your sleep mate just as restless listening for the next breath. What were the results of your clinic night?

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  3. Hilary, my oxygen levels went down to about 90% which is a rough cut off. I had decided before that they would have to be awfully bad before I would use the apparatus as I an a very light sleeper.

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  4. Keith , you get an asterisk on the wall here for being a first time commenter!!!!
    Mine was also done at Wetaskiwin in the maternity ward!!!

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  5. Hi Keith,
    I am scheduled for an interview early in December at a sleep clinic. But I have already been using a CPAP unit for a couple of months and feel great. Unfortunately that's not enough. They are concerned that although my oxygen levels are in the 95% range, I may not be maximizing the benefits by having the CO2 eliminated by sufficient depth of breathing and that could mean other neurological/physiological abnormalities in the process. I gotta wonder how effect the diagnosis is from such weird sleep testing procedures! I'll let you know! :-)

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  6. I hope I never have to go through one of those. It's also not likely, since I sleep just fine. BTW, congratulations on being one of Hilary's POTW! Well deserved...

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  7. DJan , it's good that you sleep well. All your activity pays dividends.
    I missed the post of the week .Thanks for telling me about POTW. Now I can thank Hilary or she would think I'm a real idiot.

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  8. Bobby, thanks for visiting Hiawatha house. All first time commenters get an asterisk on my wall.
    I certainly wondered about the effectiveness of the test. I didn't sleep much all night during the test. It's when you go into the deep sleep that you stop the breathing. I don't have any of the usual symptoms for sleep apnea. I'm not overweight. I did have major jaw surgery about 40 years ago and suspect this may be a problem

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  9. I don't sleep well either and I wouldn't sleep a wink under those conditions so there would be not point in me even considering it.

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  10. ...and what was the determination? Sleep Apnea or something else?

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  11. Tess, I'm borderline according to the test. I don't find it a problem although lately I don't have the same zip but that could be something else. I don't like the $3500 charge for the cpap machine.

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  12. Linda , that was my exact feeling. You have this big mouth piece that has to stay in your mouth. People who use them say it doesn't bother them.

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  13. Usually I do quite well with sleep and if not I have a volume of James Joyce I keep for occasions when I have difficulty getting to sleep. Thanks for re-posting : a fascinating back story for a relatively new follower.

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  14. Alan, it was with some apprehension that I did a repost of my sleep test. There have been some good comments.
    I am also a big reader, but I don't start reading in the middle of the night like my Dad..

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  15. My youngest daughter suffered this in her early years. Once she got her tonsils and adenoids out, she's never had an issue. There were times when she would stop breathing and we'd both be awake next door waiting for her to gasp again.

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  16. Musical, how true. I'm sure many of us have listened for similar things. Then when they were older we were listening for them to come home!

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  17. Well my husband went through the whole sleep clinic business here in Australia - except here they give you the belt and box contraption to take home and wear for one night. It records the whole sleeping activity and they download the results to their computer the next day. So it's a more normal sleeping situation. After two go's of that, we were talked into trying CPAP equipment on trial. He tried several different machines but found them all more disruptive to sleep than the supposed problem. He never got a whole night's sleep in weeks of using the machines - not him, and certainly not me. Later we found his increased snoring was more likely to have been related to the fact that his heart valves were failing. Eventually he had to have open-heart surgery. That's a whole other story you can read about on my blog's early posts, if you're interested (Doonan diddly-squat. But when he eventually battled through that crisis, he emerged sleeping more quietly and soundly than ever. Here's my point: get more than one opinion before going down the CPAP route. I think the great majority of so-called apnea diagnoses end up being a way to get you to buy expensive equipment that, at best, is a cumbersome intrusion on a natural process. At worst, this apparent solution may just end up masking other, more serious problems. In any case, don't expect your spouse to go on sleeping in the same room if you decide to use these infernal machines.

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  18. Chartreuse, you tell quite a story but it is absolutely true! I was originally wanting my allergies checked out when my doc mistakenly sent me to the sleep clinic. Good to hear that your husband has recovered.

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