Until I was in my 40’s, I took sleep for granted. Years of being on the road as a musician as a
younger man, with “unusual” hours, helped me develop the skill to fall asleep
almost anywhere, under any circumstances, regardless of the noise in the
environment, pretty much on a moment’s notice.
In my early 40’s, there was a period of five or six years
where I did a fair amount of travel by car, consulting radio stations. The longest trip by car was five hours from
Madison, and the trips involved an overnight stay. I’d “make the circuit” every six weeks or so,
and I began to notice that it was often very hard for me to stay awake during
any drive that lasted more than a couple hours.
I was driving big-ass Cadillacs at the time, land-cruisers that were
designed more to put you to sleep than keep you alert at the wheel. I would carry a pillow and blanket in the
car, and when I got tired, I’d pull off the road and sleep for a while.
I always just assumed that I was burning the candle at both
ends, and that’s what made me tired. It
never occurred to me that I might not be getting good sleep.
The life-changing experience came when I fell asleep while
having a “conversation” with my bride.
We were having a disagreement about something-or-other; the kind of
minor flap married couples have every so often.
Somewhere in the exchange I fell asleep, and when I woke up, my bride
was sitting down next to me on the couch.
While many women of Italian heritage might have heaved a frying pan at
me for falling asleep during a tiff, she waited until I woke up and realized
what had happened, and she told me it was time for me to have a sleep-study
done.
To shorten the story, I got in line for an overnight sleep
study at the UW-Hospital; they determined within about 90 minutes that I had
sleep apnea so bad that I would stop breathing sometimes for 90 seconds at a
time, fitted me with a CPAP machine, and since that time (1998) I’ve slept with
a CPAP every night. Briefly, if you
don’t know, CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure; it’s
essentially a pump that blows air down your throat via a face mask connected by
tubing to the pump, specially calibrated to each individual user’s precise
needs. Some people never adapt to the
mask-and-hose arrangement; others, like me, take to it immediately, because it
improves your quality of sleep exponentially.
I can doze without the machine, but I can’t really “sleep” without it.
These CPAP machines are good for about 5 years of nightly
use, and the machine I had was in its sixth year. So last week I made an appointment with the
sleep authorities and they set me up with the newest, most modern, hi-tech CPAP
on the market. It’s pictured above. That little thingy sticking out of the
machine is where you attach the hose, which then goes to the mask that goes
over your nose while you sleep.
I had the machine on for 90 minutes and absolutely could not
adapt to all the new hi-tech features the new machines have, like much more
precise pressure ups-and-downs in an attempt to match your natural breathing
rhythm, and – since this this is essentially a glorified air pump – every time
the pressure changes, when you exhale, the machine emits a small noise.
Since we live in exurbia, it’s REALLY quiet at night – and
that small change in the pitch of the tiny noise the new machine made sounded
like – well, my wife described it as a sheep bleating. When I finally gave up trying to adapt to the
new high-tech machine and shut it off, she was awake (couldn’t adapt to the new
noise, either), and I told her I was going to have to hook up the old machine
again in order to sleep.
I called the sleep authorities the next morning and made my
report, and they were more than appropriately concerned. I have to go in and see them again Thursday
morning, so they can figure out if the new hi-tech machine is behaving normally
and it’s just something I can’t adapt to, or if the machine itself if
defective.
I suspect the former, and that I’ll end up asking them to
equip me with a restored OLDER model, so I can continue to enjoy 8 solid hours
of sleep every night.
For some of us, not every medical advance is a good one.
