Or, how to get someone in the medical establishment to believe you when you say your sleep’s a bit f*cked up.
I've never been good at sleeping.
Seriously. My parents thought I was possessed when I was a baby, because night would fall and I would. wake. up. Start screaming. Refuse to sleep. Gentle Readers, they were so sleep deprived. I was such a monster.
As an adult, I struggled with insomnia, and then, in my twenties and thirties, as I got more and more poorly, I either slept too much or I woke up more tired than when I went to bed.
Last autumn, I fell out of bed.
Big deal, you might think. But I injured my arm pretty badly. It was Not Good.
I was having a dream that we were at a fair, and someone passed me a baby. Sorry, more accurately, in my dream, they rugby-passed me the baby. Like, two hands, bit of a spin, through the air in a neat arc. I screamed and jumped to catch the baby.
And literally, jumped out of bed. I was asleep and dreaming, and I flew through the air and landed on the corner of my bedside table.
If you've never been woken up by the slow-motion crumpling of your entire body weight (and I'm not small), onto the pointy corner of a bedside table, I can confirm it hurts. A lot. I may or may not have screamed. Again. And I looked around me for the baby, and was very confused when I could only see the magnolia coloured wall of my bedroom, two inches from my face. It is not a way to wake up. 0/10 would not recommend to family and friends.
The next day, as my arm went from arm-coloured to purple, and the bruise went from the size of a 10p to the size of a coaster, I decided enough was enough. I made a GP appointment and went to tell her I needed help with my sleep.
Doc and I chatted for a few minutes about how bad my sleep was, and I showed her my bruise. She agreed that something wasn't right, and after we completed the Epworth Sleepiness Scale Test, she advised me that she was going to refer me for a sleep study.
And so I waited. And waited. And waited.[1]
In January this year, I attended a sleep clinic, where a really nice nurse took my vital statistics, talked me through the at-home sleep study, and sent me on my way with a folder full of weird implements to strap to myself at bedtime.
I wasn't sure I was going to end up with a diagnosis of sleep apnoea. I thought I was going to end up being told "Sorry, your sleep is just bad, try bed sides to stop you falling out again."
Gentle Readers, it was all so much worse than I could have imagined.
To start with, the at home sleep study was awful. The sleep equipment was monstrous. Trying to sleep with monitors strapped to your chest, your hand, your nose...ugh. Also, I hate things on my wrists. So the pulse oximeter, that was attached to my finger and then my wrist, was not popular with Sleeping!Loops. I knew that in my sleep, I tended to take things off and throw them.
I knew this, because the previous month had seen me waking up on more than one occasion looking for my glasses, my hairband, my Fitbit that was trying to monitor my sleep and on two memorable AND COLD occasions, my pyjama top. So I had taped the pulse oximeter to myself with an entire roll of micropore tape. This baby was staying on if it killed me.
Sleeping!Loops still managed to unpick the tape and throw the damn thing across the room. Luckily, it had recorded the requisite amount of data for the sleep study first. BUT STILL.
Anyway, I took the equipment back, having been told that my results (and follow up appointment) would be in around another eight weeks' time.
Gentle Readers, when I tell you that I had the sleep physiologist on the phone about two days later, insisting I came in for an Urgent Appointment....I was slightly impressed with myself, I won't lie. "Lol, I knew my sleep was bad!" I joked, and the nice physiologist lady said, with much less humour than I was employing, "I don't think you can call it sleep."
I laughed. She did not.
I went to that appointment, which was held in the Super Special Sleep Clinic For People With Terrible Sleep Apnoea Who Need Treatment Yesterday and took place less than a week after our phone call. She looked at me, very seriously, and said, "You have severe sleep apnoea."
I laughed. She did not.
"I snore a bit," I said, slightly defensive. "But the real problem is that I fall out of bed a lot."
"The real problem," the sleep physiologist said, still not laughing oh shit, "is that you fall asleep and you stop breathing."
"But just a little bit, right?"
She flipped the screen around to show me my results.
For background here, I will explain: sleep apnoea [2] is a breathing disorder, basically identified by recurring pauses, slowing or stops in breathing whilst you are asleep. Most adults do slow their breathing or stop breathing whilst asleep, but it's usually only once or twice an hour, and it isn't harmful. There are various categories of severity, but basically, if you stop breathing more than 30 times in an hour, you have severe sleep apnoea.
Gentle Readers, as I looked at that screen, and I took in the numbers, I honestly wondered how I wasn't dead. I stopped laughing on every level. I was having 96.3 AHI incidents per hour. If you want to do the maths, that means, I stopped breathing, on average, every 45 seconds. To be fair to the physiologist, I think she also wondered how I wasn't dead.
I gulped. She reached for a grey bag on the desk and flipped back the cover. Inside, a small squat black machine came to life and his LED screen lit up.
"Lucy, I'd like to introduce you to your new CPAP machine," she said. "He's going to save your life."
Next time on Chaos Goblin: Ol' Pappy and I spend the night together, and I discover what it's like to have a panic attack behind a CPAP mask....
[1] Waiting times in the NHS are fucked up. But my waiting time on this occasion was totally within the guidelines set out by my NHS trust and I was seen within the timelines set out for a first referral appointment. But waiting times are still fucked. #fundtheNHSproperly
[2] The NHS website on Sleep Apnoea is good for information: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sleep-apnoea/. Sleep Apnoea is assessed by the AHI (apnoea-hypopnea index), and you can find out details about it here: https://www.sleepapnea.org/diagnosis/ahi-apnea-hypopnea-index/
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