13 September 2009

The planets aligned

Well it's been one heck of a bummer weekend around here. Somehow all the planets aligned just so and all four of us have been bitten by the allergy bug. Not that having allergies is unusual for us, it's just that normally they don't hit so hard AND all at once. To be blunt-it sucks.

To add insult to injury, it has been raining since Thursday night. Great for my yard and bringing forth of cooler temperatures, not so great for my kiddos who HAVE to expend energy and my dogs who track in muddy paw prints. It's a mess.

Last night though is when this miracle of maladies (so doesn't makes sense but I'm going with it) came to a head.

You see, Stuart has sleep apnea and has to sleep with a C-Pap.

Sleep apnea is a common disorder in which you have one or more pauses in breathing or shallow breaths while you sleep.

Breathing pauses can last from a few seconds to minutes. They often occur 5 to 30 times or more an hour. Typically, normal breathing then starts again, sometimes with a loud snort or choking sound.

Sleep apnea usually is a chronic (ongoing) condition that disrupts your sleep 3 or more nights each week. You often move out of deep sleep and into light sleep when your breathing pauses or becomes shallow.

This results in poor sleep quality that makes you tired during the day. Sleep apnea is one of the leading causes of excessive daytime sleepiness.

He was diagnosed while still in the Air Force and luckily got his C-Pap during that time too. It started with just the nasal mask and then progressed to the full mask.Why do you need to know this? Well, because Stuart snores. Like really, really bad. We're talking full on, bed shaking, have to poke him in the shoulder to get him to turn over, can't hear a tornado warning over it bad. (He claims that I snore too but I don't know how he would know this seeing as how nothing can be heard over his snoring, but whatever) When Stuart got his first nasal mask it took a lot of getting used to. First, he attached to the machine by this huge tube and so he can't really turn and move normally without adjusting the tubing. Secondly, with just the nasal mask he was still able to breath out of his mouth and with all that positive air pressure going into his nose, his snoring got exponentially louder (I didn't even realize that this was possible). After getting tangled in the tubing and having one too many pokes from me to close his mouth, he would give up and take the whole contraption off. A week or so later he returned home with the full mask and my life was changed forever. I am so not even kidding.

See this full mask covers his nose AND mouth. Which means I can't hear him snore. I can not tell you how amazing that first night of sleep was. And apparently it did wonders for Stuart too.

So we've been going along now for months, sleeping soundly (well semi-soundly because although you can't hear Stuart snore, you can hear the hum of the machine) when last night hits. See, there's a point to this story! Since we're all filled with snot and can't really breath thru our noses, Stuart decided to forgo his C-Pap and just sleep unaided. BAD IDEA honey. Lord have mercy if I almost didn't get out of bed and go sleep on the couch. I guess all these months of C-Pap sleeping have helped me forget the level to which my handsome husband snores. It's bad. Really, really, really bad.

So here's to the planets un-aligning today. Otherwise it's going to be a really, really, really long day.

Shout Outs:
Crayons-always good on a rainy day.
Kleenex-so nice and soft.
Benadryl- yeah.

2 comments:

Brianna Kay said...

My father-in-law also uses a Cpap. It's funny b/c when he falls asleep in front of the tv I honestly cannot hear one word!

Rebecca said...

My Dad needs one of those!! My Mom always goes to sleep in the guest room because he's soo loud.