Private Mars Rocket II

It appears that, short of the zombie apocalypse, I will actually go to the gym three times this week. Now, in fairness to sleep apnea, it doesn't take much to persuade me to skip a gym session, but my CPAP has removed one more of my objections. Go me!

So I slept again with the CPAP. This time I had only one real wake up call, a 2 AM bladder-break. But boy did I have dreams. The 2 AM wake up call involved me actually sitting on the side of the bed for a couple of minutes - long enough to wake up and realize I didn't have to dream about gathering up piles of zinc in order to go back to sleep! Considering I had gathered up all the zinc, this was a good thing. (No, I have no idea the significance of gathering any material, including zinc.)

I did have a brief episode around 4 am when my eyes popped open and I looked at the clock. In my dream, some angry construction workers were going to beat me up for reasons that were unclear at best. That episode ended with me saying "weird dream" and immediately going back to sleep. The alarm went off at 6:15 AM and I eventually got up. For the first time in a very long time I felt rested and awake instead of groggy!

Oh, and I did in fact read the manual for my CPAP machine last night. It's a highly-automated model and does pretty much everything except make breakfast the next morning. On review, I learned that the air pressure settings on CPAPs are measured in centimeters of water. One PSI = 70.307 centimeters of water (for those metrically-challenged, that's a column of water 2 feet high).

You would think nobody would need to be tested on how well they sleep. You would be wrong. In order to determine if one has sleep apnea, one needs a test, which I just took. Herewith is the report.

My doctor is a member of the DuPage Medical Group, and he sent me to another doctor in this group. The group has a sleep test center in the basement of their office building in Lombard. At 9:30 PM last night, I checked in. The room itself has all the accommodations of a Motel Six, albeit of a nicer fit and finish. It did not have independent climate control (which meant I was hot) nor did it have a clock, which was deliberate.

After getting enough wires attached to keep a NASA flight surgeon happy, one goes to sleep, monitored by camera and audio. The tech tells you that they can't officially diagnose anything, but that they may come in and have you wear a CPAP mask if you fit the criteria. It's perhaps indicative of an issue.

Well, I went to sleep, and was awoken some time later to try a mask. We tried an over-the-nose job, which only served to blow air out my mouth. The face-and-nose mask we finally went to worked nicely; however a 5:30 AM wake-up call was not as pleasant as I'd have liked. (Especially since the breather was working!)

Not having anything better to do, I went out to breakfast and into work, arriving at 7 AM. Now I wait another week or two for the official results.