I’ve been using my latest CPAP setup for about a month. In recent years I become sleepy during the day. If I try to read or watch TV I go to sleep. I had hoped this was a side effect of the apnea. I started having PAC arrhythmias a few years ago which I though might be relieved if I stopped the apneas. Apparently not, because there has been no change in either of these conditions.
[SNIP]
Sarcasm and ridicule don't address issues. They're ways to avoiding uncertainty and critical thinking.
In reading your first posting on this thread and then the last one, I couldn’t help but hear some of the same arguments I experienced, but in my case your 50-years makes my 15-year struggle seem like a cake walk.
I arrived at xPAP only after I had spent a lot of mental energy on researching and testing the logic of what I read and heard. I went through that process because I needed to stop face-planting my keyboard if I didn’t take a nap break several times during the day.
When I decided to consider that sleep problems were affecting my performance about 8-years ago, I came away from my first sleep study jaundiced at the poor performance of the sleep center. After that test experience I said to myself, I’ll just sleep on my side and that will solve it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the data to validate that side sleeping was a solution and didn’t even look at that issue. Instead, my mind locked down because I didn’t want to consider having the noise a CPAP machine created and I didn’t want a mask blowing my eyes open. Both left me worse than when I didn’t have any CPAP pressure.
In the early stages of those last 8-years I believed my solution was working, but I didn’t notice what was happening to me and I wasn’t collecting objective data. Instead, it was getting more difficult to wake up and function, and in some cases I would leave the bedroom without the horsepower to get past the couch. All too often I would find myself taking a nap after waking and before working. I also didn’t see the trend of increasing naps needed to survive a workday.
In my work creativity is critical to being successful, but without rest I kept finding myself getting more forgetful and less creative. I also noticed my ability to suffer fools was on serious decline. Not too long ago that lack of patience started to show in my overall disposition. Being cranky was beginning to affect my relationships. I noticed how much I was changing when I chomped on someone for something simple. Going out my always in control norm surprised me and got me looking at my sleep problem solution with different eyes.
For me, problems sometime surface as opportunities, but most often as unwelcome distractions. Critical to problem solving is problem definition and solution selection. Once a solution is selected the next important step is a definition of goals and that are tested against known and critically reviewed trials. If the goals are in line with the solution, then realistic timelines are needed to provide guidelines that the process is in control and working towards resolution.
In your original posting above, there isn’t any explanation that your goals of performance are realistic or even possible. For me they aren’t important to this discussion, but to you they should be one of the more critical questions you should be asking. For example, there are articles by a doctor in Australia that indicate that blood pressure in titrated patients will drop over an extended sleep study. I don’t remember there being any causal information to indicate all patients with Hypertension will experience a drop in BP. Because there wasn’t, I took the information that xPAP won’t make Hypertension worse, but probably won’t make it much better.
There are also studies that show how low oxygen desaturation levels cause the heart to pump harder and that over time enlargement and other heart damage usually results. However, I don’t believe that in any of those studies did they state that heart damage is repaired by xPAP titration.
My point in all this is to say a couple of things. First, some of us have the same concerns but some of us have decided that quality of life each time we wake each day must be better for us to continue. My second point asks if your expectations are realistic and in line with what has been proven. Having heart repair on your list of expectations might be a bit over the top, but I’m only guessing. Are you?
If I were you, I would begin asking what is the minimum expectation I should expect from this to put up with the aggravation of living with a hose. If your relationship with your wife is important and you care about how she feels, give that some weight. From what you’ve written so far she would be basket case if you went belly up next to her, and with your heart issue, that likelihood is higher now than it was years ago. Especially in your case with what you’ve said about your heart.
For me, relationships are one of the most critical component in my quality of life calculation. I really want to be here to aggravate my wife , guide my children and be a grandfather to some future grandkids if that happens. My kids look up to me and see me as a mentor. My bride thinks of me as her best friend. How does your wife see you, and how do you see her. More importantly, what can you do to make this work so she can feel secure a little longer. Giving up is a option, but it may take more courage to not to let go right now.