Poll: Age/Cpap Users

My guess is the cpap will NOT reverse any damage done by time I hit a Nursing Home. Plus, I certainly would NOT want to extend my stay in one either.

It is so sad that we consider ourselves civilized while we watch the terminally ill suffer but consider it OK to not let an animal suffer.

My mom passed away a year ago at age 82, with several years of diagnosed early-stage Alzheimers. For many years she slept with her mattress tilted down to counteract what she thought was a hiatal hernia...later found to be GERD. She had always been incredibly healthy, exercised avidly, no alcohol, no overweight, no smoking, walked or bicycled for an hour a day for years...but for the last 4 years of her life (even before the Alzheimers was even slightly noticeable) was sleeping 12 hours per day with naps.

What has disturbed me frequently since her passing, is that for a solid year (her last living year) when she was still in early-mid stage Alzheimers, she was having "spells." No other way to put it. My dad found her to just drift off suddenly while sitting upright, and not be able to be aroused. No loss of pulse or loss of breathing--heavier than just dozing off. And after multiple trips to the ER when this happened, no testing for strokes or heart attacks or neurological events ever revealed anything!! I am not an MD, but after I discovered I had OSA this past August, I just have no question in my own mind that my mom's decline and those strange "spells" that led to her final heart failure, may very likely have been undiagnosed OSA as well. Makes me profoundly sad that her doctors never thought of it as a possibility.

Rooster wrote:
The ones with CPAP machines don't need nursing homes.

Wow. You know, you just might have a point there, Rooster! I count myself among the lucky ones who discovered that I have sleep apnea and now use CPAP to treat the beast (actually, my wife observed my breathing stop a couple of times during the night—she thought I was dead—and that prompted the doctor visit and subsequent sleep study). I hope you're right—I guess we'd all like to go quietly in our own bed when the time comes (with our CPAP machine running full blast :<). I wonder if these machines ever resuscitate us—no, probably not.

Hey, once you HAVE to become a PERMANENT resident of a nursing home, who cares? Most just want outta there and don't care how soon or how. I know that is how my mom felt about it. We brought her home almost every weekend, I stopped for an hour or two almost every night on my way home from work. She hated it there tho they were good to her because she was BORED, even just a half hour drive around the hold neighborhood helped. She liked the staff, but hated having to be there. When she had to go into skilled care she gave up and just wanted OUT no matter how. She said more than once she would rather be dead. She so envied my dad and step-dad, both of whom just "went" w/o being in any way incapacitated. The same was true w/my father-in-law. My sister-in-law visited almost every day and took him home as much as was allowed but the two older brothers had the control. She would have kept him at home w/her and her husband but the two older boys wouldn't allow that either.

The idea of obstructive sleep apnea is not new to the medical community. What is changing is the profile of the patient disgnosed with sleep apnea today. I believe alot of the people who had sleep apnea are not in the nursing homes because the health complications caused an early death. I had no idea I had sleep apnea. Yes I'm overweight but NOT morbidly obeses. THe pulmmonologists I work with where very surprised to find our how sever my apnea was. THe only clue I had was that I snored. But I'm from a family of 11 and we all snore. THen I found out my fit father was tested and he had sleep apnea. So because of that and my new husbands lack of sleep I went in for testing. I believe as more people go in for routine testing we will see the numbers increase dramatically in the general population as well.
Jo Ellen

Bets wrote:I think this may be a sign that I am too competitive . . . I want my age group to "win"! Go 46 - 50!

We're leading by 1 at the moment...

62

Johnny1959 wrote:Prior to my mom's passing two years ago, I spent 10 years visiting her in a nursing home. During this time span, I did'nt see a single cpap machine.

Hence my curiousity with this poll.

A good friend of mine is the nursing director of a nursing home, and we have discussed apnea at length over the last month. She said that a few of her patients at the home use it, but most will not tolerate it, becoming combative about keeping the mask on. I would suppose that they don't have the staffing at night especially to deal with patients who will not use the mask.

I will be 80 in 3 weeks and on CPAP for about 4 years now.
If I ever have to go into a nursing home, let it be to visit and not reside....

I was a heavy snorer, and good wife insisted I was not breathing for longer and longer periods,
plus I would get up, have breakfast and then need a nap, and then another after lunch.

I figure CPAP gave me a good 10 years more of active life.

Thanks to this forum, I got rid of my lousy DME and just buy what I need, when I need it..

Thank you, thank you CPAP.com

grybeard77 wrote:I will be 80 in 3 weeks and on CPAP for about 4 years now.
If I ever have to go into a nursing home, let it be to visit and not reside....

I was a heavy snorer, and good wife insisted I was not breathing for longer and longer periods,
plus I would get up, have breakfast and then need a nap, and then another after lunch.

I figure CPAP gave me a good 10 years more of active life.

Thanks to this forum, I got rid of my lousy DME and just buy what I need, when I need it..

Thank you, thank you CPAP.com

Wow! 80. Happy Birthday!!I hope I'm still here posting on cpaptalk.com when I'm 80. Hooray for you (and cpaptalk.com)!

Well, gosh, that's good news. I really didn't know there were that many of us, and its good to hear from you, Grybeard. You have me beat after all - guess I was wrong again. And I hope we're still on this forum for another 10 years, or longer. Its good to have all this wisdom to draw from and also to get encouragement from each other.
Jay

rooster wrote:For a while when I visited her I would peek into a room just down the hall. There was a tiny, slim, elderly lady, always in a nice dress and always lying on the bed on her side. She was always snoring heavily and struggling to breathe. After about a month she passed away. I wonder if she was in the death throes of sleep apnea? What a shame.

I had an experience just recently that made me kind of wonder about those sort of things.

My mother went into the hospital (for a problem unrelated to this anecdote, but an emergency.) She's diabetic and normally takes several oral medications for glucose control. While she was in the hospital, even though they knew which medications she normally takes, they didn't give those to her! So of course, her glucose level was wildly variable and swinging up and down all the time. And the nurses at the hospital got all excited and were strictly controlling her diet, basically giving her almost nothing to eat, and started giving her insulin all the time... this despite both she and members of the family repeatedly suggesting that the reason for the poor sugar control was the absence of the meds. When she left the hospital she simply started taking the oral medications again, her sugar level got under control, and she didn't need the insulin any more.

And this was at a very good hospital, a teaching hospital and probably the best one in the state. I was just surprised by it because it seemed... clumsy.

i hate to be a glomy gus but........
maybe all us cpapers die out before we get to the nursing homes.
face it - who was actually diagnosed before some serious damage happened that we don't know about....?
maybe the same genetic traits that give us osa give us some other ticking time bomb.
who knows?
something to think about.

At 22 (just about 23) I might be the youngest one here. Before getting CPAP I always had sleep efficiency problems and notorious snoring, but I never imagined I'd clock in at 90 apneas/hour, nor how different I'd feel after getting a full night's rest.