Sleep? Who needs sleep?

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that sleep has been a challenge for me. I’ve been through a sleep study and been diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. I was prescribed a CPAP, which is supposed to help alleviate the most severe symptoms of my sleep apnea.

The magic cure hasn’t been so magical — at least not yet.

My first challenge was the first nasal mask that I started out with. It worked okay except that it rubbed the bridge of my honkin’ big nose raw, to the point that wearing it would actually wake me up in the middle of the night and the discomfort of wearing it with the raw sore on my nose was too much to keep wearing it all night. So, last week I went back to the sleep clinic to get a new style of mask, a nasal pillow.

It was definitely a step in the right direction because it is substantially more comfortable to wear. The only real challenge I’ve had with this mask is that it has to fit just right to prevent excessive air leakage and that can be a little tricky getting everything to fit just right. But eventually I get it fixed good enough to work. Once my lungs (and brain) get adjusted to it, which can take several minutes each time I turn on the CPAP machine, it’s relatively comfortable and effortless.

So, I can sleep like a baby now, right? Not quite yet.

Now that I can breathe relatively normally, another issue becomes more glaring and bothersome. My pillow is not every comfortable and invariably gives me a neck ache and/or a headache. Some nights it’s uncomfortable enough that it wakes me up early — as in 3am… or earlier. Yesterday morning, I kept waking up from about 2:30 on, so I finally just got up at 3:45 and did some work.

Then Oklahoma weather has asserted itself into my sleep trials and tribulations. We seem to be in a cycle that when we get bad storms, it’s overnight… usually during my prime sleeping time (11pm to 3am). Last night, it was all night. The storms started about 10pm and basically continued through about 5 this morning. Even now, lightning and light rain persists. On nights like last night, the weather radio, which can be a very useful forewarning tool, becomes a nagging irritant. Once again, alerts were going off many times every hour… all night long! I’m tempted to just turn it off, except it’s our best warning if there were a tornado because it’s too difficult to hear the tornado sirens, as was proven once again most recently just last week when we had a tornado within a couple miles of our house. So, it’s either easy sleep accompanied by a really big risk or it’s a little peace of mind with an oft-interrupted night of sleep — thus far, I have chosen the short-term sacrifice for the longer-term well-being!

Unfortunately, it looks like there could be repeat performances for the next couple of days. So, if you catch me dozing off at my desk at work or if you notice that I haven’t posted for a couple of days because I’m passed out in my recliner, you’ll understand why.

Sleep? Who needs sleep? Well, I do — desperately! It’s getting better, but I still have a long way to go — longer than I had hoped after my sleep study. I fantasized about a magic cure with the CPAP, but that hasn’t happened quite yet. If I can get my pillow and the weather to cooperate, I just might get that long-dreamed-for night of sleeping bliss.

Sweet dreams!