:/ This bitch right here. My guess is that I’ll need yet another one to determine if I have sleep apnea. This whole thing is such a massive pain in the ass, I just want to cry.
I had a sleep study at home a couple years ago because I’m a pretty low-energy person and the doctors wanted to know if there was something wrong with my sleep. It showed sleep apnea. So I tried a CPAP, and I could not sleep with it on. I tried for like a year. I think I got maybe one night of sleep with it in that whole time. So I decided to ask if I could get a mouth guard or something else to treat it. But then they wanted me to do another at-home sleep study. I did, and it showed no sleep apnea. So they wanted me to get one done at a sleep center. After putting it off for like a year, I finally made the appointment a few days ago and got it done last night. But, as per the title, I didn’t fucking sleep. I think it was at least partly because of the thing that connected to my nose–I have trouble tolerating things on my face while I sleep.
I hate this so much. I know that living with untreated sleep apnea is really bad for you, and it makes me so anxious to know that that’s probably going on with me. I won’t even know the results of the “sleep” study for another 2-3 weeks, and then I’ll probably have to make another appointment to try again. Fuck this. No wonder I put it off for so long.
Depending on the type of apnea you have, you might want to research hydration strategies. I was looking into the surgical options for apnea (pillar procedure was big at the time) and ran across pharynx exercises and hydration being just as successful as the surgery.
Exercises need to be taught by a speech therapist, and the hydration was simply 3 liters of water a day. (Plus your coffee and tea. They didn’t count toward your 3 liters. It had to be 3 liters of plain water.)
The exercise and water worked really well, and we dropped the surgery plans.
Huh. Duly noted.