CPAPtalk.com

A lot of people don't believe in medical conditions they can't see for themselves.

Ignore friends and family comments unless they are certified sleep doctors.

Note: Many negative comments are generated by the fear of having the issue themselves.

Loreena wrote:

kteague wrote:Just yesterday when a fairly new friend called and wanted me to go do something with her, I declined because I was dragging and sleepy. She commented in an accusatory tone, "So-and-so has what you have and they feel just fine."

Here's my favorite: Sometimes I don't have a great night and my friend will say: "Can't you just repeat what you did the other night? Haven't you got the pattern down by now?"

I've got one better! When I mentioned that my hubby had a bad night I was told to consult my Dr because I must be doing something wrong! Grrr!

I do have other health issues such as chronic pain.
And I ' Never' discuss pain with anyone but my
Doctor. Everyone's pain is different ! I hear all the
time I hurt and I can do it. Someone's pain is
Allways worse than the other persons.
So that subject is like
religion and politics. And I zip my lip ...

To be diagnosed, we need to have symptoms.
I was one of the lucky ones. My symptoms were not the most obvious one--DEATH.
Some of your naysayers may suspect they, themselves have OSA, but are in denial.

Just be glad your not like one lady who recently posted and said her family/children had her half convinced the noises coming from her CPAP machine were from demonic possession. Man, what some mean people will do to screw up other people's well being.

I was patted down at an airport once after a swabbing of my machine. The gentleman who did the patting asked about the machine and shared that he snored and woke up tired. I suggested that he ask his Dr about a sleep study since he had questions.

A teachable moment. I find them all the time. I really need to carry around cards;
one for symptoms, another for sources, and this forum.

Carry on with your treatment. Everybody will see the difference in you.
They'll start asking questions. You'll feel rested and ready for the day.

msla wrote:I was patted down at an airport once after a swabbing of my machine. The gentleman who did the patting asked about the machine and shared that he snored and woke up tired. I suggested that he ask his Dr about a sleep study since he had questions.

I was also patted down only once so far & it was in a small airport in Madison, WI.
They used to always just make me open my CPAP bag & have the end with the motor in it exposed when it ran through the X-Ray. They never took it out of the bag. Now they no longer even make me open the bag.

But at that airport once, I had already gone through the detector with no problems - then it beeps AFTER I was already on the other side.
I started to back up through it again, when the TSA agent says "No, you are alright - the machine just picked you for additional screening (every Xth one, I was told).

They did pat me down & was supposed to wipe down the CPAP, but somehow they forgot to do that. I was leaving on the 6:00 A.M. flight & it was just 5:30 or so & they had just began to screen the few people there - so they were still not totally organized.

My wife always gets additional screening because of her bionic knee.

Both of us having additional screening must have looked weird to the other passengers.

DoriC wrote:

Loreena wrote:

kteague wrote:Just yesterday when a fairly new friend called and wanted me to go do something with her, I declined because I was dragging and sleepy. She commented in an accusatory tone, "So-and-so has what you have and they feel just fine."

Here's my favorite: Sometimes I don't have a great night and my friend will say: "Can't you just repeat what you did the other night? Haven't you got the pattern down by now?"

I've got one better! When I mentioned that my hubby had a bad night I was told to consult my Dr because I must be doing something wrong! Grrr!

Dori that is pathetic. You need to get a stun gun.

Stormynights wrote:Dori that is pathetic. You need to get a stun gun.

Maybe "Sheriff" has a few old Stun Guns laying around he could pass out to those here in need?

I know a couple of people here we could try them out on.

hyperlexis wrote:
Why do they know or even ask? You do know you are supposed to take the mask off during the day, right?

ROFL! Hysterical!
Ahem. OK...I've stopped chuckling now.

The others have given you good advice about how much to share. All I have to add to that is to develop thicker skin for those who share snarky comments. Doesn't matter much what they think anyway.

The only people outside my immediate family who are aware of my OSA are some friends that I travel with.

Well, when I was a new PAPer, I went from being functional to looking like the walking dead and becoming highly disfunctional. People at work were asking questions: You look awful. What's wrong? Anything I can do to help? was a regular, on-going greeting every time anybody saw me for the first time each day.

Telling people what was up was not easy, but it wound up being somewhat important. But it did elicit a lot of strange and less than welcome "ignorant" comments that were meant to be kind. A lot of them were of the "You're too skinny to have apnea" variety. But the ones that hurt me emotionally were when friends and colleagues reacted with visible horror to the notion that I had to deal with sleeping with a mask every night. I don't know how many times I was told, "I could never sleep with a mask, are you sure there's not something else you could try?" And I don't know how many times I was told, "Can't they do some kind of surgery to fix the problem?"

robysue wrote:But the ones that hurt me emotionally were when friends and colleagues reacted with visible horror to the notion that I had to deal with sleeping with a mask every night. I don't know how many times I was told, "I could never sleep with a mask, are you sure there's not something else you could try?" And I don't know how many times I was told, "Can't they do some kind of surgery to fix the problem?"

Ugh, YES! Drives me batty. My in-laws would always ask "How in the world can you sleep with that mask"?? My reply - "How in the world was I ever able to sleep *before* the mask [cpap]??!"

They still ask me now and then "Do you still sleep with the mask every night?" As if I were going to grow out of it??!

Last week all 4 of my sisters-in-law went on a trip together - NONE of them could sleep during the trip because each other's snoring kept them all awake (though presumably somebody had to be sleeping in order to snore ). These are the same people that I've told for the last 6 years to go get sleep studies *because of their snoring* and yet they don't listen. I'm tired of talking to idiots. So now I just ignore their stupid remarks. THEIR LOSS.