Happy New Year! In all honesty, I really hate new year’s and the whole ideology that surrounds it, but that discussion is for another day.
Back on the tail end of 2024 my doctor wanted me to do a sleep apnea study even though I wasn’t showing signs of sleep apnea. I felt like I was getting enough sleep, even though I am tired every day, all day. Chronic and extreme fatigue is a main symptom of DM which is something our neurologist knew. He still wanted to check all the boxes though.
I went to a sleep center and went through with the sleep test which is a very strange and unpleasant experience. You are put into a hotel/dorm like room but you’re hooked up to a number of different things. I had leads on my neck, heart, head, leg, and chest and it’s only so they can get all the readings but that still doesn’t help the fact that it’s very uncomfortable.
Sleep Studies require a minimum of six hours of sleep, and I felt like I barely got that. Every time I was in twilight the technician would come in because a lead would come off of me and they would have to re-attach it.
It was the week of Thanksgiving when I received an e-mail from the sleep center giving me the news, I had sleep apnea which surprised the heck out of me. Their report had shown that I had stopped breathing multiple times through the night. Though my case is mild, it can be potentially a very dangerous disorder if I’m not treated. I already have respiratory symptoms because of DM so I’m now required to use a CPAP machine at bedtime.
I’ll update on how that goes but because I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, I had to take the sleep study a second time. This time to get my prescription and see which sleep mask best suited me.
Yall the second time was worse than the first. Because I’m a mouth breather at night I have to wear a full oxygen mask which I was really hoping I didn’t have to wear. Not only was I wearing a full-face mask, hooked up to the leads (again), but I was having air being pushed down my airway which is a very hard thing to get used to. On top of that you’re still expected to get six hours of sleep. When I say how happy I was to be done with these sleep studies, it’s an understatement.
A member of one of my DM support groups had gotten a diagnosis of something else and she said, ‘we’re just out here collecting diagnosis like infinity stones’ (Chronic illness humor) and I couldn’t help but laugh. How true is it? All my fellow spoonies know the reality of it.