Waiting For CPAP

Welcome back to the next Thriving not Just Surviving blog post. I decided to take a few weeks off from posting because there hasn’t been much to report. Its been a slow process waiting for the official results of the sleep study that was conducted at the end of May.

Fortunately, I received the results a few days ago and we will be moving forward with acquiring a CPAP machine to treat my severe sleep apnea. The official results reaffirmed what we already knew. It was noted that I average 35.9 sleep apneas every hour; meaning that I stop breathing for at least 10 seconds 35 times in a single hour. The excessive amount of sleep apneas cause my oxygen level to drop below 86% during sleep. Lack of oxygen can lead to a host of other medical problems including: heart attack, stroke, brain damage, and even seizures.

As I stated in my previous post from a few weeks ago, this is good news because it could explain the seizures and at the very least should improve my quality of life. The informal research that I’ve conducted found that there is a reciprocal relationship between sleep apnea and epilepsy. Some epilepsy patients develop sleep apnea from the anti-seizure medication they take. Apparently the medication can over-relax the muscles in the back of the throat and cause the airway to narrow during sleep, resulting in sleep apnea. The sleep apnea then exacerbates the seizures from the reduction in oxygen levels and excessive fatigue. Other research found that many people with primarily nocturnal seizures were able to successfully eliminate them after starting CPAP. Its impossible to know how it will impact my situation, but I hope six months from now we can look back and point to this diagnosis as the key in the elimination of the seizures.

We are currently waiting for the insurance company to approve the purchase of the CPAP machine. Hopefully they call in the next few days and I can receive the machine by the end of the week. If everything goes according to plan, I could be back in Kansas City at this time next week. However, past experiences have prepared me to accept that the process could be a bit slower.