Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Apparently, I'm Climbing Everest Every Night

I went to the sleep clinic recently to get my sleep apnea (which I knew I had - it runs in the family) diagnosed and treated. The results: Apparently they consider anything over five episodes of breathing cessation per hour to be a diagnosis of "sleep apnea", and over 30 per hour is "severe". I averaged 130 per hour. That's one-hundred-and-thirty.

My O2 saturation levels were below 90 for 70% of the time I was asleep, and dropped to a low of 53 at one point. It seems to be typically about 80 for people staying at the main Base Camp on Mt. Everest, for crying out loud. I don't know why I haven't just suffocated to death in my sleep before now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've got a buddy that was having over 200 episodes a night but he got a breathing machine and he's doing much better now. He used to snore to the level that you could be in an hotel room next to him and still hear him... scary. Can't imagine living with him. So, there's hope... and he's about 5'8" and ~350 lbs

Anonymous said...

One of my ex partners suffered from the same problem, so I know how distressing it can be - without fail, he would stop breathing two or three times a night and I would automatically wake up, paranoid that something was really wrong.
Nothing did, though. You did the right thing going to the sleep clinic.