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this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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this was 2021-2023 for me. it turned out i had moderate obstructive sleep apnea. i just thought i was getting old and the world was falling apart, which are true statements. but the apnea thing had been silently building and its effects are cumulative over the years of never getting any real rest for the mind or body, as it would have to stir itself roughly every 2-3 minutes because i had stopped breathing. all of this unnoticed by me, just tired in the morning and tired all day and tired in the evening. sneaking naps when i could. i only did the sleep study because my PCP had been voicing her suspicions for nearly a year and pushing me to get it done. i was blase about all of it, but figured i would check the box to get her off my case about it.
my first real good night's sleep in several years, if not a decade, was january 2024. the materials said the effects of treatment were also cumulative and it would take months to disentangle my mind and body from what had happened to them, but after that first night i knew i was on the right track. i didn't wake up irritable. i didn't feel like i wanted another hour of sleep. i just calmly opened my eyes like an android, took note of the time, oriented myself, and started my day. i'm nearly a year later, and there's no question in my mind it saved my life in more ways than one. as my senses grew sharper, i noticed opportunities to improve my situation and had the energy and will to pursue them. i made conscious choices to replace good habits with bad habits. it all snowballed. "drink plenty of fluids and get plenty of rest" seems to be the perennially good advice for life.
i'm not saying you have sleep apnea and that this is your way forward or that diagnosis/treatment of everything isn't plagued by capitalist BS. however, i have noticed that a lot of people do have the apnea and are ashamed or embarrassed about having it, so they don't mention it until i'm like evangelizing to them one-on-one out of nowhere about how treatment changed my whole ass life. so its like this hidden epidemic. and i had no clue what was going on, despite being pretty invested/involved in my body and meta-cognition.
anyway, hang in there. i saw a corgi on a walk yesterday in the cold and it had on little yellow rubber boots that matched the poncho, which it seemed quite proud of as it eagerly pulled the bipedal parent along. everybody on the street was sort of transfixed by the scene.
Awww, dogs in boots are always adorable.
As for sleep apnea, I am most certain that I probably have one. What was it like to get a proper diagnosis, and was there anything cheaper than a machine that helped you out?
It was... not great, even living here in Sфviёт Cдпдdд. So much for universal health care—lungs and brains are luxury organs, just like our teeth are luxury bones.
The referral to the sleep study was pretty straightforward, and didn't cost me anything. They sent me home with a portable machine to wear attached to my face, and it recorded my breathing overnight. Then I went back to the clinic, they told me, "Yep, you definitely have obstructive sleep apnea." And then they asked me to pay $2500 for the machine and mask (which is about triple what it's actually worth at retail prices—and that's certainly marked up substantially).
Mercifully, my partner and I were both working at the time, and we had pretty okay health insurance, so split between our plans, our "health and wellness spending accounts", and putting the whole thing on a line of credit until they reimbursed us a month later, I was able to get my CPAP machine.
It's failing now, since that was over a decade ago. I'm dreading my next doctor's visit.
I wish
I wish Canada were 10% as cool as American liberals make us out to be.
yes, I want to live in the world that right-wingers believe we live in
Thanks, and hope the next visit goes ok
my employer at the time was OK as far as benefits go, though those benefits were being steadily eroded so there was some lameness.
but logistically, during a routine appointment, my primary care set me up with a referral to the sleep clinic. I contacted the clinic made an appointment for a virtual consult. a 15 minute conversation with that person set me up with an appointment to come in and pick up a gameboy-sized pack with a sort of harness and some attachments where the clinician explained how I wear it and hook it up before bed so it could monitor my movements, breathing, and pulse/ox via the finger. they gave tips on how to sleep with it on and there was a little book to follow. I think they only needed like 4-6 hours of me being asleep to make a diagnosis, so they said if I woke up and shit was unplugged it wasn't a big deal. but I had to bring the pack back the next day and wait 10 minutes in the lobby for them to confirm it had enough recorded data, which it did. within a few days they gave me a diagnosis and another virtual appointment to discuss my severity (moderate) and treatment options. she wanted to start me on a machine and they set me up with an appointment to go into a DME shop who took my insurance and sent them my diagnosis/treatment settings. so I went in there and a super nice, gentle lady spent like an hour with me explaining how it worked and helped me pick out/try out different masks and shit based on what was important. everybody in this process confessed they also had apnea and confided they preferences for treatment. the DME lady got me all set up and talked about how the machine could be rented or purchased (this is where my insurance went shit because they negotiated away purchase to force rental, but if you can purchase or rent to own it's so much better... I got lucky in that I changed employers and my next insurance company / employer (after phone calls from me) just covered it all and I stopped having to pay anything. union job lol. they ship me new stuff and consult about how things are going every few months, letting me know about all the no cost stuff I can get to try other masks or whatever.
anyway, after the initial consult/sleep test at home, and treatment consult, it's actually been very chill. it sends my usage data and info to the clinic on its own via cellular network and they can make adjustments or whatever if needed. I adjusted to it immediately, though I didn't think I would. theyl advice I got was to take it home and try it on just hanging out on the couch or whatever to get used to it while not trying to sleep. shit, 10 minutes later I almost fell asleep.
anyway, I started looking forward to going to sleep because it's like actually restful and restorative.
so I had OK insurance that downgraded after a few months, then upgraded to good insurance about 8 months into treatment when I moved a thousand miles away to a new employer, which was a logistical pain in the ass at the time but as I was getting good sleep I had the energy and drive to stay after it.