Sleep?

A couple of months ago I trecked back to the doctors, I'm beginning to feel like an 80 year old, bringing my list of issues. They put me on a heart monitor for 48 hours and the good news is that what I am feeling isn't my heart in any dangerous zones. My 'racing' and 'slowing' are within normal ranges, so they atest it to hypersensitivity or an adrenaline feed. So nothing to do about that.

But when I mentioned that I can't sleep, they wanted to see what my heart was doing while I sleep and discovered I have apnea. So over several weeks I have had 2 nights of sleep testing. The first one diagnosed the apnea, the second was adjusting a c-pap machine to fix the apnea. I'm pretty certain this has to be a highly entertaining job! When air is pressured up your nose, and you open your mouth in the slightest, it will trigger your gag reflex, and you can't talk with it on, or kiss your hubby goodnight!

I stop breathing 9 times and hour in my normal sleep and 15 times an hour in my dream sleep. My oxygen levels drop below 80% and don't recover before the next episode.


They believe that if I can get good or even better sleep, the rest of my heart issues will dissipate. The example they used was if you drove your car all day and when you pulled it in the garage left it running, it wouldn't last long and wouldn't be good for the car. If my heart has some legitimate down time, and can actually rest and rejuvenate then it may behave better when it's up and running.

So now instead of just reading and taking a sip of water before bed, I have to hook up and adjust, turn on the machine, adjust some more, adjust pillows, adjust blankets, adjust some more, repeat as necessary! Providing all this entertainment for Jeff! Thankfully he doesn't hear the machine and isn't bothered the least by it, and I can still hear the kids when they wake up!

Before my machine I was sleeping I was averaging 4 hours of sporadic sleep each night. After a couple of weeks of adjusting I'm now sleeping 6-7 hours of straight, knock out, don't even move sleep! Which I haven't done in a very long time!

One Saturday morning I even slept in until 10:10! I couldn't even believe it! It was so quiet!

They seem to think that if I can sleep better that these remaining issues will go away, so I am so determined to make it work! I have seen great improvement on my chest pain and headaches! I think the symptoms from the apnea are what allowed them to discover the hole in my heart. Usually if an adult has a hole it's discovered by a stroke or heart attack. So I'm thankful for the apnea! The world is a different color with sleep!

Thank you for your continued concern and prayers!