What Triggered Your Need for CPAP?

For years I've had trouble sleeping - frequently waking up, trouble falling asleep, restless sleep, insomnia. I mostly attributed it to Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). I have a severe case and it greatly affects sleep. However, with changes to my medication I have my RLS under control. I then read the book, Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. It's an incredible book on many levels. I realized how super important sleep is to our health and well-being. So, it was getting my RLS under control, the book, and my wife telling me I snore most every night that triggered my decision to see a doctor about my snoring.

What's your story?

Michael

I was sleeping a long time. I look back, but it wasn't great. I had the typical sleep apnea symptoms. I kept complaining to the doctor I wasn't feeling good and sleepy all day, falling asleep at traffic lights, etc.... Finally, I was speaking to a nurse who had sleep apnea himself and he told me he suspected I had sleep apnea. He spoke to the doctor and a sleep test was ordered. I ended up with an AHI of 73 or 75 on the sleep test. After struggling a few weeks and going thru a half dozen masks, I was able to sleep with the mask.

Sheriff

I second your recommendation of the Walker book, Michael.

I was craving naps all day, feeling gloomy and irritable, having trouble thinking of words, and having lots of memory lapses. I had chronic greater trochanteric pain (inflammation in the tendons that go down the outer sides of the thighs), and I would toss and turn most of the night trying to ease the pain. My sleep was lousy.

One time, talking with my doctor about yet another way to try to alleviate the night-time pain, I said offhandedly that I thought even if the pain were under better control I would still have trouble sleeping. He ordered a home sleep test, and it showed an AHI of 23.

The apnea treatment is very effective; the pain business is a work in progress. But at least I now get the best sleep possible within the limits of the pain. Happily, just this past week, I have had a bunch of nights where I was comfortable for the first six hours of time in bed. Nice!

Sleep Apnea triggered it, bit it was guessed at a Quad By-Pass, where it took them 20 minutes to tube me for the operation. Jim

I fell asleep at inappropriate times, even when driving. I was notorious for snoring, and my wife noticed that I often stopped breathing while asleep. By the end of my workday I was exhausted and often took a nap as soon as I reached home. By sheer chance I happened to see a TV feature made at Stanford, and Dr. William Dement was explaining a sleep disorder he called Obstructive Sleep Apnea. As I watched him, I realized he was describing ME!. That was in 1987, and then there was no diagnosis or testing in my small town. So I went to the great Washington University Medical Center in St Louis, was diagnosed, had on overnight sleep study (63 AHI) and was fitted with a Healthdyne CPAP that didn't even have a runtime meter, much less data readout. BUT it worked, and though tose early masks were terrible I was convinced of my relief, and have faithfully ueed some corm of XPAP for 33 years now. And I am still grateful to Dr. Dement and to the good doctor in St Louis who put me under treatment

Was never sleepy, but was starting to sweat overnight (so not like me) and have vivid dreams, then my ex told me I stopped breathing at night... until I would all at once, so I got a test where desats were not good at all, and here I am. Was lucky the lab gave me an auto right away before they were that common, and a decent, if inadequate (nasal) mask which got changed to FF not long after.

On a family trip, I woke up in the motel room with everyone sitting around me--laughing.
It was then I realized the bullfrog was not exaggerating about my snoring.
I had been falling asleep at my desk at work, and got written up for it-
Went to the doctor for a sleep test.---but our HMO "determined" I did not have apnea.
Their "sleep test" was completely bogus--just an EKG under sedation---WTF?
Many years passed . . .
I was concerned about the bullfrog's stopping breathing while asleep, but the only way
he would get a sleep test was if I went too.
We were both diagnosed --with REAL PSG's.
His is positional--stopped sleeping on his back.
Mine wasn't.

symtoms of snoring, not sleeping well, being tired during the day, memory issues, irritation

sleep study revealed AHI of 30

I didn't discover I had apnea until after I was treated for cancer (age 69) and recovered. I had extreme fatigue and felt winded very often. I wrote it off to post cancer treatment side effects but kept searching for a cause with cardiologists ("everything fine"), oncologists ("maybe"), physical therapist ("lack of use") and pulmonary doctor ("get rid of your parrot"). Finally after my wife mentioned snoring and gasping for breath during the night and remembering that my father may have had some kind of "issue" I asked for a home test for sleep apnea and turns out I was a severe case. Only been 6 or so weeks on CPAP and my AHI has dropped from 56cm's down to 2.1cms and feeling much better.

Pretty sure I've had it since I was a kid. Always falling asleep in class. All the way even through college. I never got tested because I have never been a snorer. It was only a last resort after other various tests by my PCP that I got my first sleep study. Opened my eyes. It makes me wonder what life might have been like if I'd been tested much earlier. Shoulda coulda...

Chris

At age 51 I found myself at Emergency with atrial tachycardia (HR 170 for over an hour, nothing could get it down until eventually the medicine they gave me kicked in and my heart rate went back down).

An astute young ER doctor suggested I go for a sleep study as many arrhythmias are apparently triggered by untreated OSA. I thought he was being ridiculous quite frankly because I don't snore and my husband says he has never heard me gasping for air at night. Also I have energy to spare. I associated sleep apnea with folks who fall asleep all the time and can't stay awake. I am the opposite.

Well, my sleep study indicated an AHI of 16.1 I was so surprised.

Very grateful to that ER doctor!

My teenage son was the the first in the family to get diagnosed, he was falling asleep constantly throughout the day (sometimes would even fall asleep while standing). He began failing all his classes because he was sleeping thru them. It was an uphill battle to get his doc to order a sleep study because he didn’t fit the docs preconceived notions of what a sleep apnea patient looks like and “all teenagers are tired all the time”. The fact that my son has OSA was not the only thing his sleep studies revealed. Because he was pediatric I was required to spend the night for his study and in the morning the sleep tech monitoring his study told me she heard me gasping for air all nightlong and advised me to convince my doc to order a sleep study for me. At first I couldn’t talk my doc into a sleep study because as a petite, healthy woman in her mid 40s my doc didn’t think it was likely that I had OSA. I talked the doc into overnight oximetry which thankfully demonstrated the need for a sleep study. I was surprised to learn that I had moderate OSA and even more surprised to find out that my O2 sats at night were under 88 for over 4 1/2 hours. I hadn’t realized that I had been overly tired during the day, it wasn’t until after I started CPAP and finally was getting good sleep that I realized how much of a negative impact OSA was having on me. Before CPAP I didn’t know how horrible my sleep was and that I was overly tired and fatigued during the day, because that had always been my normal.

Two years ago, right after my mother's death and during cataract surgery I went into atrial fibrillation. (I mention these two events because the anxiety they produced may have pushed me into the a-fib.) The heart doctor later told me that sleep apnea often caused a-fib, and ordered a sleep study. So after more than a year of me fiddling around, he ordered a second sleep study, and a few months later I finally obtained and started using apap. I adjusted to the therapy 'shockingly fast' according to my doctor, and I've been at it four months now.

I don't notice that I feel any different, but the low AHI's indicate that I actually am sleeping better. I know it is protecting me from any number of medical problems that apnea can contribute to, so on I go.

Menopause. .....good old Mother Nature.
Everything starts to sag....boobs, butt, belly....and airway tissues. I never even snored prior to menopause and hubby reports he never saw me quit breathing either until I was in the midst of all the other menopausal symptoms.

Around 1995 or 1996, I was snoring very loudly and my wife complained about it. My PCP scheduled me for a sleep study, but did not see the results of the test. The young man that did the testing suggested I see an ENT about correcting my badly deviated septum instead of getting a CPAP machine. At the time, my job required a lot of travel and I was flying all over the country on a regular basis. I was already carrying a nebulizer because of my asthma, and I really did not want to have to drag another machine around with me. (The CPAP machines then were much larger than the machines today.) I ended up having my deviated septum corrected, turbinate reduction and UPPP surgery done at the same time. This eliminated my obvious sleep apnea signs (snoring, etc.) for several years. When I had knee replacement surgery in 2014, the nurses put an entry in my chart that my blood oxygen levels would drop when I slept. The doctor that did the morning rounds scheduled me for a sleep study without telling me. I went through two sleep studies, and when he tried to order a machine for me, Medicare rejected the request because he had not documented a face to face meeting where we discussed sleep apnea prior to the first test. I ended up finding a different sleep laboratory associated with the medical group my PCP works for and I scheduled a new sleep study with them. I finally got my machine almost 9 months after my first sleep study and have been using a machine for five years.

About a year later, I noticed my wife was snoring more, and would quit breathing when she slept. I tried to get her to do a sleep study, but she said she was sleeping just fine and would not do it. When we had our next physical, I mentioned the snoring and quit breathing to our PCP, and she scheduled her for a sleep study without asking her. She has had her machine for three years now, and uses it every night.