OT: anyone have sleep apnea here? Need to help my hubby

Habs,
Sleep Apnea can cause many health problems and if severe enough, he could die in his sleep. I don't want to scare you, but I have worked in the med field for 20 years and just graduated nursing school. He has to see a doctor. It sound like to me, it could be his blood pressure dropping suddenly when he stands up, it is called orthostatic hypotension. Just a guess, good luck.

It took me five years to convince my husband to seek help for his sleep apnea. It was so bad that I could no longer sleep in the same room. Even two rooms away, if I awakened in the night, I would lie in bed listening to the silence, almost holding my breath in sympathy with him, just waiting for him to breathe and then get agitated by the sounds of him struggling to get air in. When he finally agreed to see a respirologist, it was only "for me", as though his sleep apnea was a problem for me not for him.

By that time, he was falling asleep at his desk at work, he was unable to function after supper in the evenings, falling asleep in the middle of conversations and basically just zoning out in front of the television. I was terrified when he drove. Even though his anxiety levels while driving are enough to make him hyper-vigilant, he admitted that he was finding it hard to stay awake behind the wheel.

We were lucky. He didn't have to go into a sleep clinic for assessment. Instead, the assessment was conducted at home using a monitor that was downloaded and read after the fact. The results were even worse than I imagined. At his appointment I had estimated that he was awakening (they call it arousals) five or ten times an hour. He was actually having up to 35 arousals an hour. That is when the oxygen saturation in your blood is so low that your hypothalmus kicks into survival mode. You start awake and that gets you breathing again. You may not come to full consciousness but you can imagine how much it affects the restfulness of your sleep.

Needless to say, a CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) machine was immediately ordered and he has come to realize he needs it to survive. The difference in him was immediate. He regained energy he thought he'd lost due to age and began to enjoy life again. As much as he hates using his machine (he is a mouth-breather and needs a complete face mask, not just the small nasal mask) life without it just isn't imaginable.

His blood pressure is better and he has lost 40 pounds in the last year, mostly, I think, because he now has the energy to be active. He has another 30 to go before he is back to the weight he was before his troubles began.

The best part of all is that my husband has rejoined me in bed. That time apart has made us both realize how much comfort we take from each others' presence through the nights. I felt like I had abandoned him when I made the decision that, for my own health, I couldn't sleep in the same room with him anymore. But I think that was the catalyst that eventually prompted him to seek help.

Have you ever recorded your husband sleeping? I was driven to do that at one point, and while it was embarrassing and painful for him to listen to himself --he described the noise as a whole zoo full of animals -- he needed to hear what he was putting himself through every night.

From my experience, I know that i could never have "forced" him to seek help. Indeed, I am friendly with the respirologist who used to run the local sleep lab. When I described my husband's symptoms he was prepared to order the CPAP equipment and set everything up in advance of an appointment with just the GPs referral in hand (at that time the wait list locally for this service was more than a year). Even with that incentive, I couldn't get him to act. Not then. He had to be ready to deal with it.

All you can do is continue to express your concerns about what this is doing to his health and to point out the ways in which you see it impacting on him and on your relationship. Has his energy levels dipped? What about his interest in sex? Is he nodding off in the evening? What about driving? Try to help him figure out why he is so reluctant -- is it embarrassment, fear of the discomfort? Is he living in denial?

Clearly he is at risk. The passing out is most likely, as other posters have noted, due to positional hypotension, but it is not normal and should be assessed.

Good luck. Dealing with husbands who are reluctant to take charge of their health issues can be frustrating, but hopefully you can find a way to be his partner in the process not his opponent.

Good Morning,

Great Info shared with you already.

Sleep apnea is a common sleep disorder where you stop breathing during the night, often hundreds of times and for as long as a minute or more. When you prevent breathing, oxygen levels in your blood fall and levels of carbon dioxide increase. This causes the heart to pump more strongly and occasionally to beat irregularly, or even to stop altogether for several seconds. Your chest and diaphragm muscles work harder and your blood pressure increases. Eventually, the brain senses that your body is in trouble and wakes you sufficiently for you to start breathing.

What you described, IMHO, could be orthostatic hypotension which was already mentioned or you might look into having his Blood Sugars checked for hypoglycemia.  Another major cause of fainting is a slow heart rate.

He does need to see a physician as fainting is not normal, something is going on somewhere.  You might tell him that going to the physician's on his own beats an ambulance ride if he passes out and you cannot wake him up :)

My hubby does not like to go either but I am not to proud to harp at him.

Keep posting and know we care.

Kitt

Hey Habs, Try and convince him to have a sleep study done. My hubby did this last summer because we all complained about his snoring. He was dx with sleep apnea and got a machine to use at night. It works wonders no more snoring and he's not tired all day now. Does he know anyone with an apnea/breathing machine? Maybe if he talked to them he might change his mind. Good luck getting him to go, keep us updated.

I work with 2 people who have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and swear by the CPAP.
I was diagnosed as having sleep apnea towards the end of 2006. Never felt like I had it in the first place, but sleep study said I did. I didn't want to do it either, but did it for my wife and kid. I tried the CPAP mask and could not sleep at all with it on or the BPAP(the next step). Doc said only other option was surgery which may or may not work. Fortunately(??) for me, I got sick with Crohn's disease, went from 160 lbs to 140 lbs and was pronounced cured of the sleep apnea. Strange how life works sometimes.
Hmm, now I wonder what can I contract that would cure my Crohn's?? Unfortunately, I am sure that if there were something, it would only be something even worse.

Hey there,

Hopefully his physician will lay it on the line...........he needs to go to the sleep lab and be tested.  It is painless............lol, he just has to sleep.  The CPAP machines are much better than the earlier ones and less cumbersome. My FIL has one as many of the patients at the hospital had them.  They are compact and he can take it with him whereever you go if he needs one.

He will feel so much better if that is his problem and it could very well be.

Gentle hugs to you and you are a wonderful advocate for your husband.

Kitt