Who initiated the diagnosis of your Sleep Apnea

[Fredman]

Who suggested that you may have Sleep Apnea and should have a test to confirm?

[Pineapple]

No one really.

Last Thanksgiving, I was having a conversation with my 2 sisters about our health issues. All of us had the exact same symptoms, but each of us had a different diagnosis and none of us was recieving any relief from our symptoms. Suddenly a light turned on. I call my mother into the room, repeated the symptoms and asked her who I was describing. "Your father was told back in the 50's he would always have his cronic isomia" was her reply. My older sister's jaw nearly hit the table - "how did I miss that?" We all agreed we must be suffering from some genetic sleep disorder.

So home I went. I have been working with a new GP since last summer on my increasing fatigue (I rated it as debilitating in Dec 2006). I told him I wanted a sleep study. I could tell by his reply that he had concidered apnea as a possiblity but put the idea aside because I didn't fit "the profile". Anyway I pushed the subject and got the referal.

[Goofproof]

I went in for a quad-by-pass, it took them 20 minutes to get the airway to do the operation. Ruined their Golf Date. I couldn't get my O2 up after the operation. Jim

At sleep test 450 events in three hours.

[Needsdecaf]

I'll be the bigger man and give the credit to my wife.

My snoring had been getting worse and worse since we had been dating and then eventually married. Not coincidentally, my weight had been climbing as well.

My wife was getting more and more annoyed at my snoring, so I told her I'd go to an ENT to have him look into it. Well, I kept procrastinating. In the meantime, she began to note that I would stop breathing every now and then, or so the thought.

Well, you all know what that triggers...sleep study. And the rest is history.

[glfredrick]

I knew that I had a problem -- and I started tracking it down. My wife confirmed my diagnosis when I presented her the symtoms.

I then went to my family doctor, and he agreed with my assessment and scheduled me for the sleep study with the sleepy doc.

Since, I've also taken my own care into my hands. The sleepy doc is pricing himself out of the equation. His co-pays are enough to banckrupt us... My GP will take over my claim and write the scrip as needed for new equipment, etc.

[Fredman]

For me it was my dentist. My then GP sneared at the idea and chased me from his office

My new GP was in total in agreement with my dentist. During my visit with the dentist she noted the wide tongue and narrow larynx. Also I had a stuffed nose that day and had to mouth breathe (which is hard to do when you are having dental work done!).

Yeah after a home study, I was diagnosed and given a scrip for my machine and now here I am! Like many wishing that I had been diagnosed decades ago.

I am sure my CPAP therapy has given me back a few years!

[Country4ever]

I had a neurologist order a sleep study for me, but he said it was normal, although I only slept for an hour and a half.
I have fibromyalgia and had seen tons of docs for all the symptoms I was having.
After 10 years of feeling like dying, a new Internal Medicine doc suggested another sleep study. He said that they were finding that many people with fibromyalgia had a sleep disorder.
He's sooooo on the ball. I am so lucky to have found him.

[CompuTech007]

I had a long history of waking up in a panic and trying to catch my breath. My wife and thought it might be stress or eating too close to bed time. I kind of lived with it but became more concerned as time went by. I was taking a lot more naps and wanted to sleep all the time.

My big wake up call was about 2 years ago I when I had a TIA which scared the crap out of my wife and I. We were driving (me at the wheel) and all of a sudden I felt weak and started to feel like I had a low blood sugar attack but with a twist. I had to pull over to the side of the road as I couldn't focus enough to drive. I tried to talk to my wife but the words came out upside down and backwards. My wife laughed but suddenly came to realize I was having a mini stroke or something.

Sure enough after the family doctor ran the typical tests for this and came that I did have a mini stroke andhigh blood pressure. I didn't take that as the answer though as I wanted to know the WHY and what for, the real cause of this. I studied all I could about TIAs and related issues. And thought that Apnea might be the cause. Of course wanting to be stuborn I waited and after a year on bp pills and felt a lot better but still sleeping a lot and not feeling rested. I decided to have my long over due sleep study done last fall.

Of course the study showed I did indeed have moderate Apnea stopping breathing for about 5-6 minutes an hour. Better late than never I guess. Still adjusting but feeling much much better.

Oh and as a bonus my blood pressure has reduced to a comfortable level and I took myself down to 1/2 of the dosage of medicine as the original prescription of 10 mg was too high now. I've also lost about 17 lbs since October!

Cheers!

[rested gal]

Diagnosed and treated myself:
viewtopic.php?p=5977#5977

Two years afterwards, I finally had a wonderful opportunity to get a sleep study:
http://www.apneasupport.org/viewtopic.php?p=7956

[CollegeGirl]

Fred,

There was a discussion on this board a while back about how many of us were diagnosed by psychiatrists/psychologists. There are a lot of us! My GP (working in conjunction with my psychologist) sent me, personally, despite my insistence that I'd been tested 7 years before and told I didn't have it, and so that couldn't possibly be the reason I couldn't sleep at night. Thank goodness for that doctor's hard-headedness. lol.

[Fredman]

rested gal, I have read your links and all I have to say is good for you! It's unfortunate that you had to improvise and find ways to diagnose your sleep apnea - all because of the costs, hoops, and hindrances to access the medical care.

It doesn't matter what side of the border US or Canada, the costs for testing, acquisition of equipment, maintenance and the like...can be prohibitive. (Canadians do have a great medical system, but as costs rise, more and more is becoming de-insured from the public system and off loaded to third party insurance. Third party insurance is now also not covering certain meds or at lower recoverable percentage.)

It is too bad that politics and self interests of certain titans of industry, don't see the potential cost savings to society on to their bottom line that occurs when people that have sleep apnea are diagnosed and treated. I heard a stat (someone correct me if I am wrong), that 1 in 4 people with sleep apnea are diagnosed and actively treated.

I am not an American, but I do see the crisis in medical care many face and believe Canadians need to take note. It's time for change as Obama says (sorry couldn't help it ) and I believe for all North Americans...healthcare is something we all should be guaranteed - yes I know there is a huge cost, but life is precious - so precious.

[roster]

I am not an American, but I do see the crisis in medical care many face and believe Canadians need to take note. It's time for change as Obama says (sorry couldn't help it ) and I believe for all North Americans...healthcare is something we all should be guaranteed - yes I know there is a huge cost, but life is precious - so precious.

August 22, 2007
Why the U.S. Ranks Low on WHO's Health-Care Study
By John Stossel

The New York Times recently declared "the disturbing truth ... that ... the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care."

As usual, the Times editors get it wrong.

They find evidence in a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) rating of 191 nations and a Commonwealth Fund study of wealthy nations published last May.

In the WHO rankings, the United States finished 37th, behind nations like Morocco, Cyprus and Costa Rica. Finishing first and second were France and Italy. Michael Moore makes much of this in his movie "Sicko."

The Commonwealth Fund looked at Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States -- and ranked the U.S. last or next to last on all but one criterion.

So the verdict is in. The vaunted U.S. medical system is one of the worst.

But there's less to these studies than meets the eye. They measure something other than quality of medical care. So saying that the U.S. finished behind those other countries is misleading.

First let's acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own.

Even with all that, it strains credulity to hear that the U.S. ranks far from the top. Sick people come to the United States for treatment. When was the last time you heard of someone leaving this country to get medical care? The last famous case I can remember is Rock Hudson, who went to France in the 1980s to seek treatment for AIDS.

So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.

The WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But that's a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That's not a health-care problem.

Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.

When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.

Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.

Another reason the U.S. didn't score high in the WHO rankings is that we are less socialistic than other nations. What has that got to do with the quality of health care? For the authors of the study, it's crucial. The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how "fairly" health care of any quality is "distributed." The problem here is obvious. By that criterion, a country with high-quality care overall but "unequal distribution" would rank below a country with lower quality care but equal distribution.

It's when this so-called "fairness," a highly subjective standard, is factored in that the U.S. scores go south.

The U.S. ranking is influenced heavily by the number of people -- 45 million -- without medical insurance. As I reported in previous columns, our government aggravates that problem by making insurance artificially expensive with, for example, mandates for coverage that many people would not choose and forbidding us to buy policies from companies in another state.

Even with these interventions, the 45 million figure is misleading. Thirty-seven percent of that group live in households making more than $50,000 a year, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Nineteen percent are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20 percent are not citizens, and 33 percent are eligible for existing government programs but are not enrolled.

For all its problems, the U.S. ranks at the top for quality of care and innovation, including development of life-saving drugs. It "falters" only when the criterion is proximity to socialized medicine.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... hos_h.html

[Fredman]

Thanks rooster, good article. Yes certainly the costs of socialized medicine in itself can be the cause of rising Medicare costs. For instance, many canadians have no idea about the true costs of treatment and take it for granted that a quick visit to the doctor just because they have a cold is their right...well that attitude is costing us now!

Also, sometimes the "free economy" is often unfairly blamed for social ills of a nation too.

Life is not a free ride and we all do need to take the responsibility for our own lifes, but the point I am making is that no one should - and I don't care if we are in a free market economy or socialized economy - no one should be held back from getting the medical attention they need. I do admit though that is a dangerous stance because then there is the whole argument about folks that abuse the system and are active with their own care.


Thanks for posting that article, very enlightening indeed.

[SleepyInIndy]

She kept at me telling me that my tiredness every day was 'not normal' and not due to 'ageing'. She also kept saying that I looked 'gray'.

Eventually, I did go to my doctor who immediately ordered blood tests to look for the obvious stuff. Other than my sugars everything was cool. Since he has been treating me for diabetes for several years the sugars were no suprise. He then referred me to a sleep doctor who immediately ordered the sleep study and yadda, yadda.

So it was my better half that started the ball rolling, but my doctor took the situation seriously and proceded on an orderly process to find the cause.

[roster]

.......but the point I am making is that no one should - and I don't care if we are in a free market economy or socialized economy - no one should be held back from getting the medical attention they need. ......

Fredman,

Let me see if I understand your position.

Let's talk about three people (or three groups of people) and let's call them persons X, Y and Z.

In your position, you believe that one of these people, say X, should have the power to force one of the other people at gunpoint, say Y, to pay for the medical needs of a third person, say Z.

If that is your position, then who will get the role of person X?