Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Sleep Study


Both Rachel and I have noticed how I've been unable to get through the day without a nap. We'd also noticed that, even after 10 hours in bed, I was essentially exhausted upon waking up in the morning. What gives? This isn't normal, is it?

Well, a night at the local Sleep Study Clinic revealed that I was indeed having a hard time getting any rest, despite the amount of sleep I was getting. The testing showed that I experienced an average of 30-40 apneas per hour and 5-8 restless leg motions per hour. The clinician said it was a wonder I was able to get up in the morning, since a night's worth of sleep only brought me about 3 hours of rest compared to a normal person.

This might also explain why I had such long and difficult recoveries from both my pacemaker surgery and from the last couple colds & infections I got. My body had always given me stellar recovery, but I always slept a lot when I needed to recover. It my sleep now doesn't provide true rest, that would explain why I'm not bouncing back the way I used to.

The next step is to investigate my options. The most common remedy is a CPAP, a special machine that forces air in through your nasal passages in such a way that you don't snore or have apneas. However, CPAPs are heavy machines and are not very mobile. That's hardly the best solution for someone who has to travel a lot. So I'm also checking out other alternatives like surgery and oral appliances. None of them sound like fun, but I'm fed up with being tired all the time. Unless the surgery has a low success rate, I'm leaning in that direction.

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Comments:
Whoa - the picture looked like the Six Million Dollar Man there for a second! Either that or the beginning of RoboDBA.

My dad had the same problem and had surgery several years ago, and he's been happy ever since. Well, he was happy before that, but now he's happy and well-rested. (Still snores, though, oddly.)
 
That should be my Twitter tag! "RoboDBA says backup your databases or there will be trouble!" ;^)
 
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