Sleep Study
Over here at HOI, Steve reminisces about this weekend with his Dad in Kentuck, trying to sleep through jet-engine like snoring.
I can relate. Or, those that know me, can.
I went through a sleep study some years ago. Let me tell you something about sleep studies: if you can sleep through one? you DON’T have a sleeping issue.
First: I cannot sleep on my back. Sleep sudies pretty much require that you sleep on your back.
Second: SOmeone is watching you sleep. If this doesn’t creep you out, you need to have a check up from the neck up. No, it’s not about modesty, see the post several below this one- I showered daily with over a hundred other guys for years. It’s just creepy.
Third: You have a hissing, burbling thing sitting thirty inches from your head inflating you as you try to sleep. You have to push hard to exhale.
Fourth: you have electrodes glued to your scalp, legs, etc. with the medical equivalent of Elmer’s Glue.
Fifth: Every time you move, some electrode/wire/piece of tubing/whatever comes loose and the examiner has to turn on the lights and come in and fix something.
sixth: When you DO get a CPAP, it’s like having Darth Vader whispering in your ear all night long. While a machine inflates your face. Should you accidentally open your mouth, the whistling noise will make neighbors a block away think you’re yodeling.
I could as easily have slept with a pair of live scorpions duct taped to the inside of my eyelids. It’s pure and simple bullshit. I pity anyone who goes through it, and as far as I’m conncerned, anyone who claims to derive any benefit from this voodoo is demonstratingthe placebo effect.
I am a sound sleeper, always have been. A tornado once rocked the foundations of our house, sucked off a part of the roof, busted the windows out of the house. I slept through it. I woke in a rain-soaked bed covered with broken glass while my mom and my kid sister cowered in the basement. I have slept standing up wedged between two huge pipes filled with extrmely volatile gas. I have slept on a picnic table in a park while someone was using a chainsaw five feet away.
A commenter at Steve’s place suggests I “zen out’. Sorry, pbird. Pity you were taken in by this bullshit. Sorry my insurance premiums go to pay for rube goldberg treatments for made-up maladies so idiot physicians can take their seat by the money river and dip into my pockets.
15 comments Og | Uncategorized
Funny, I can’t sleep right now, though once back when I was a young’n, a couple of the guys were trying to prove to an Lt. how deep of sleeper I really was, and set off a quarter stick of C4 about 15 feet away from where I was crashed out in my fartsack.
I didn’t even roll over.
My Dad was like that. One time, about a year before he died, I thought he WAS dead when I tried to wake him up while he was sitting in his favorite chair. I guess trying to get some shut-eye in WWII France while Jerry is trying to bomb you out goes a long way toward making you that way.
Unfortunately I did not inherit his ability to drink coffee all day, sleep six hours, and wake up refreshed. Damn it.
Sorry it didn’t work for you, but my own CPAP has been a godsend. Better sleep. No family kept awake because I’m rattling the window panes.
I don’t have a Darth Vader mask, either. Just a nasal canula. The machine they got for me is very quiet, too.
Yep, the sleep study was a pain in the ha-ha… but worth every second of it for me.
Yep, everyboby tells me I have sleep apnia. Snore like a moose, or some other large hairy thing. Can’t confirm. I sleep through it. Slept right under the forward catapults on the USS Ranger in the first gulf war. F-14s at full afterburner right overhead. No problem. I think the water would have awakened me if we’d been sunk.
I hate you all.
I just got back from a fishin’ trip with the father in law and one of his buds. All day walking the pleasant mountain streams hunting trout, and then the hell of night.
I set up my one man pup tent 15 yards away from the old fellas. All night, the roar of the snore, punctuated by the odd loud stuccato fart. I stumbled out of my sleeping bag each morning, tired and red eyed.
One might ask how their women put up with it. I hypothesize (from a safe distance of course) that some women are even WORSE.
:)
You maniac, you probably sleep so deep because your apnea/lack of oxygen makes you sleep deprived. I dunno what your sleep study showed but oftentimes people with obstructive sleep apnea wake up a zillion times a night and fall back asleep and wake up again over and over. The sleep they do get tends to not be restorative.
Apnea is a real thing and it really kills people when untreated; people have heart attacks and strokes in their sleep. They have auto accidents when they fall asleep behind the wheel. That kills people too.
Please be careful.
BTW, you don’t have to get a mask per se; there’s nasal cannulas available with nasal “pillows” that make sleeping witih a CPAP or BiPAP more comfortable. It’s still not the most fun thing in the world but I know quite a few people who use them and the quality of their lives improved with a good night’s sleep.
Cpap: No sleep at all.
No cpap: Plenty of sleep.
Nope, not convinced it’s anything but voodoo. If I told people they had to sleep with a clothespin on their toe, and had a complex enough “laboratory test” to determine the size of the clothespin and the strength of the spring, and instead of calling it a Clothespin I called it a “tarsal stimulus device” and made it cost $3500, I bet I could come up with the same number of people that would be “helped” by it. And some who would swear that it was the only thing allowing them to sleep at all.
Since the foolishness with the Cpap, I have learned that as long as I don’t sleep on my back I have no apnea. I sleep soundly and awaken refreshed. Laying on my back was the problem, not the need for a piece of technologicasl bullshit.
Two sleep studies.One c-pap. Umteen different types of head gear and nasal tubes. More sleep studies. More money. I felt like I was snorkling without the benefit of a sandy beach and a tropical drink. I’d rather snore than sleep wrapped up in tubes. I just couldn’t do it. I sent my c-pap, and all the supplies that I had, to a good friend in Colorado. He’s thrilled to have a back up unit to keep at his girl friend’s house. I’m glad to have it off the table next to my bed.I don’t miss it.Mark snores, too. Together,we make two part harmony.
Now, og, about the clothepin. Does it work ? Anthem will pay for the study and the equipment if I can prove medical necessity.
swmbo
Jim made me laugh out loud, and spray coke on the screen with the stuccato fart remark.
I instantly thought of the old german antiaircrft guns in WWII being replaced by old guy’s asses..
My elderly Mother-in-law has to go in for a stay in the hospital to be tested for sleep apnea, which has me concerned. In my opinion she’s having mini-strokes and is confused from falling (3 or 4 times so far)and I think the testing is just going to confuse her and scare her. Not to sound all conspirital or anything but I think they’re milking it for the insurance.
I spent a month traveling through Newfoundland back in 1978 and was taking a week-long trip on a coastal ferry that serviced the small fishing villages that had no roads outside the village. Lots of fun; the Captain knew everyone and had some awesome evenings of Screech and Poker.
At the end of the trip, we were coming back into home port around 3:00am. I do remember a noise and people running but I turned over and went back to sleep.
Woke up a few hours later to discover a lot of television cameras, reporters and townspeople surrounding our boat and we were not tied up at the ferry pier.
It seems that it was pea-soup fog and (of course) pitch black. The Captain knew the harbor by touch and was inching back to his pier when bam!, he hit a 100 foot fishing trawler that had moored at the ferry pier not knowing that it was coming back that evening. The ferry was relatively unharmed but the fishing boat had a huge gash in its side and was sunk at the pier.
So yes, I slept through a shipwreck.
C’mon, Og, ya gotta help pay for the machine that goes “ping!”
Had to laugh out loud at the description of the sleep study. Had the exact same experience. If I sleep on my back I snore so loud the neighbors call animal control to complain about somebody with a pet bear so I NEVER sleep on my back. On my side I sleep fine with no problems at all. However, the “sleep lab” AKA “torture chamber” was absolutely designed to force you to sleep on your back with a bed from motel 6 that sagged so bad you had no option. Plus, I sleep on a king size and this thing was your basic single; if I had rolled over I’d have been on the floor tangled in the tubes and wires. Not to mention the weird sounds, whiring machine and a creepy tech who reminded me of Dr. Kevorikan – try sleeping throught that! They even videotaped the whole thing.
I’ll bet that there are a huge percentage of false positives. Let’s face it, sleep apmea is “in”; its a trendy “syndrome” – no one calls it a disease – where they get to prescibe expensive machinery and get you to check in for the rest of your life. Big bucks for the doctors and equipment makers. Me, I’m looking for that clothespin!
This is guranteed to cure you snoring. No need for mouthpieces, sprays, surgery or other drastic measures. 100% natural