Sleeping, but not breathing

for paNOW

I was within a very few seconds of plunging off the side of the road into a ravine beside Highway 3. I was asleep. Until that moment, I was well rested. I was a bit sleepy, but not anything opening the window wouldn’t cure. I was wrong — almost dead wrong. I was asleep at the wheel.

Aren’t you glad you weren’t driving near me? I pulled back from the shoulder into the oncoming lane and then into my own lane without anything but panic I didn’t look. Other drivers saved me by getting out of the way.

In the previous weeks, I had been getting a lot more sleep than usual — from 10 p.m. until 10 or 11 a.m. Husband frequently woke me to tell me I was snoring or not breathing. Sometimes, I awoke with a start. I mentioned it to a friend and she ordered me to get to a doctor immediately. After a few tests and a week of sleeping with a mask that opened up my throat I learned that I have sleep apnea — actually quite a bad case. I stop breathing every 1 minute 50 seconds.

Most people don’t know they have sleep apnea. But it is fairly common. Do you have it?
Think about these symptoms: drowsiness during the day, snoring so much or stopping breathing for several seconds often enough that your partner wakes you up, mild depression, falling asleep or getting so tired it affects your work worse memory than usual, failure to be able to concentrate, falling asleep while driving or getting so drowsy that you have to pull over to the shoulder to try to shake the sleepiness.

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I had been doing that for years. Have you — recently or for several years? See your doctor as soon as possible. Sleep apnea can easily be fatal — even if you don’t fall asleep while driving. Results also include cardiovascular disease, strokes, diabetes, heart attacks, abnormal oxygen in the blood or even sudden death. It is a very serious condition!

Sleep apnea consists of stopping breathing while you sleep. Your brain doesn’t force you to breathe normally again. You will (or won’t) gasp and start breathing again. It can happen several times or very frequently during the night, while you are asleep. It is caused by too much relaxing of the soft tissues in the back of the throat, such that it restricts – or even closes – the airway. Sleeping on your back is not a good idea because it helps cause the relaxing of the tissue.

Your doctor will send you for some tests. The sleep clinic’s test is to send you home with a machine, and mask that fits closely over your nose. The machine keeps your breathing regular by forcing those tissues to stay tighten up so they don’t obstruct your breathing. You are to use it every night. Once the teaching nurses know what pressure level you need, you will be loaned a machine to use every night from then on.

Sleep apnea can start at any age — rarely, but possibly even in children. If you think you might have sleep apnea, see your doctor and get those tests right away. As I said, it is a very serious condition.

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As one of our boys used to say when he was a child, “You don’t want to wake up dead.”