It's a well written article and worth reading:
http://www.elle.com/beauty/health-fitne ... nightmare/
It's the fascinating story of how a young, thin woman who had lots of problems sleeping and tried everything to fix it without success - only to eventually find out that she had UARS/sleep apnea.
Here's a small excerpt:
[...]
After some tussling with my health insurer (Manganaro says insurers seem to prefer to wait until people develop the calamitous downstream effects of untreated apnea—such as high blood pressure and stroke—rather than pay for preventive measures), my CPAP machine finally arrived. It looked like a clock radio, connected by a long tube to a mask for your face. I had to try five masks before I found one that didn't give me claustrophobia or rub my nostrils so raw and pink that I looked like a coke-addicted rabbit when I awoke. Ultimately I settled on a snazzy ResMed AirFit P10 for Her, size extra-small, that goes just into the tips of my nostrils and gives me the appearance of having a dainty lilac-and-white elephant trunk dangling off my schnoz. It's the least sexy thing I've ever worn to bed, outside of the disposable panties filled with ice packs and Tucks hemorrhoid pads the hospital gives you after you have a baby.
I was told it would take a couple of weeks to get used to the machine, but it took me nearly two months. It was definitely a "nevertheless, she persisted" type of situation. At first, I had to use sleeping pills to be able to fall asleep with the mask, and I'd often rip it off in the wee hours. But then the turning point came: I woke up one morning and realized I'd slept straight through the night—CPAP success! But then my heart sank. Where was my mask? I didn't feel it on my face; I must have clawed it off without realizing it. I scanned my bedside table, looking for my little lilac elephant…before realizing it was, in fact, still on my face. I'd acclimated!
Once I was able to wear my CPAP through the night without sleeping meds, my fatigue and anxiety just…stopped. Another part of my brain—the part that had enthusiasm for work, playing with my kids, even getting errands done—turned on. It was like I'd been listening to a fire alarm for decade upon decade and then, finally, found the button to switch it off. At my follow-up visit with Manganaro, my resting heart rate had dropped from 79 to 60 beats per minute.
[...]
