Children with Apnea

Gryphon wrote:I also had horrible night mares and sleep terrors as a kid. (Bed wetting issues also) Very interesting dreams too - one was like being inside of a kaleidoscope and the level of fear and dread would start scaling up and up and up till all the pretty colors would start flashing and then end in a strong point of light like when you turned off an old picture tube TV set. Then I'd wake up gasping for air with my heart racing like I'd just survived a near death experience. (maybe I had... )

The other dreams were not quite as abstract but all of them had a kind of central theme. Usually would start out in a normal if not odd situation that would slowly get creepier and creepier then I would relies I was being hunted or stalked by something or someone... My thing is I wouldn't always wake up when I got caught. Dream of falling? Most people say they wake up before they hit the ground. I wouldn't, It's a very very weird feeling when you hit. Everything would go black and I'd have this feeling like I'd been doused in warm Novocaine, akin to that dead feeling you have when being put under by anesthetic so I'm not sure what kind of things were going on inside my head but I'm sure with my low oxygen levels I don't want to know.

I used to be terrified of going to sleep - was scared of the dark and didn't want to go to bed as a kid. I didn't start liking my room to be pitch black until after I got my first CPAP machine. One of those Resperonics machines with the blue headlights on top that would light up your whole room. Ironic I know. I kept a black wash cloth that would rest on top to cover the lights.

I got tested in my late teens but the whole test was a disaster and the night of the test I most likely didn't get any REM sleep at all. (That's when my apnea would get scarry bad( I didn't know any of what I know now then to dispute the "inconclusive" test results and demand another test. 10+ years went by and I kept getting worse so I went in for testing again and was diagnosed with profoundly severe sleep apnea. AHI in the high 70's and desats during REM in the mid to low 50's Tech said at one point I stopped breathing completely for over 2 min. Makes sense now why I was so good at breath holding during the day. I was getting in a lot of practice at night.

I could average 3+ min while I used to swim in the pool. ( I could go longer but that was back in the day of the TV Show "Resque 911" and I would always hear that voice telling me that brain damage starts after 4 min with no oxygen so I would always stop and come up for air before I hit 4 ) I used to practice to see how many lengths of the pool I could swim before having to come up for more air. Lots and lots of my child hood symptoms and issues made sense after my diagnosis and further research.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I personally think that every single person ( starting when we're kids ) should have an over night oximetry reading done no mater what at least once every 5 years or so as part of a full physical and standard health care. It's such a cheap and harmless test and if it shows issues, could help so many people not just with apnea issues but with other health issues that could be caught out by oximetry testing. Maybe once every 10 years but 5 years if you have a family history or other risk factors.

If the test shows no desats but the person is still having sleep issues a follow up with a qualified sleep specialist could still be done. But I wonder how many people are out there who's oxygen levels are dropping each night that could be flagged and diagnosed if they simply tested for it. Have it become one of the excepted tests that gets performed on a person. Like medicare recommendations that you get tested for bla bla bla at such and such time etc... If people are worried about the costs of such a test - I wonder what the savings would be in catching and treating desats that lead to organ and tissue damage over a prolonged time when left untreated. How many cases of dementia or heart attack or stroke could be completely avoided and those costs would never have to be spent instead could go elsewhere?

I still think that Sleep Apnea is under rated and not as well known as it should be. I have a feeling if we looked for it we'd find it all over.

Rest well!

Gryphon