Hello, I am new to this forum and came across it because I am waiting for results of a home sleep apnoea test. I am from Scotland and maybe the laws are different where you are from, but in this country, if we suffer from excessive daytime sleepiness, which is most commonly caused by sleep apnoea, we must inform the driver and vehicle licencing agency. I did this and they have revoked my driving licence until I have a diagnosis, treatment and improvement shown by effective treatment. I will then have to reapply for my licence.
I would say to anybody that has been told by their doctor to have this testing done, then he must feel that you are a major risk to yourself and other peoples lives if you get behind the wheel of a car, lorry or bus, and cause an accident by falling asleep at the wheel. This is the major cause of road accidents in the UK. Sleep apnoea is more common that we think and poses the bearer, if not treated, a life of not being able to think quickly, unable to make decisions properly, forgetful, moody, groggy, and dangerous.
I am still waiting for my results, but the test did not involve a mask, simply a small nasal canula, finger probe, waist belt and chest belt to record breathing, oxygen saturation, and heart rate.
I would also say that your husband should be encouraging you to take the test, after all you are important to him. Do you think he will think you less attractive if you have to wear equipment?
I was tested and do not have apnea, I have segmented sleep which is quite different. That being said, I can not sleep with a mask on thanks to the positioning and movement I go through while I sleep [yes, I literally do sleep face down on the bed, arms crossed under my chest, and resting my forehead on the mattress which leaves my nose not smashed into the mattress so I can breath. No idea how I evolved that position.]
I am not the only person who resists masks, some people have a claustrophobia issue with something on their face, others might have suffocation phobias with the way the CPAP forces air.
Re the claustrophobia / suffocation, I can definitely understand. I tend to be very very sensitive about anything that might impede breathing, myself (can’t even wear a snug turtleneck), and those first few deep breaths at the beginning of the night, to activate the machine, are not a lot of fun. And the first few breaths once it IS activated aren’t fun either - the physical effort involved in walking to bed, getting comfortable with the pillows etc. is JUST enough to make me want to breathe more freely than the machine entirely allows. I usually get it started, then take a few open-mouthed breaths (it’s a nasal-pillow only) to satisfy the hunger, then I’m find.
If a CPAP is truly mandated and you have claustrophobia issues, there are some pretty minimalistic masks. That plus a sleep aid the first few nights may be enough to get such a person over the hump.
andrea10163, interesting about registering and losing your license. A lot of states in the US have such laws regarding other medical conditions such as epilepsy but as far as I know, none have laws regarding sleep disorders. Not a bad idea, actually!!
Hopefully you’ll be able to get your results soon, and then (if appropriate) get in for your titration study quickly. That’s the one where you actually do use a mask, and they determine your settings.
Have you considered going to a different doctor than your husband does? I wouldn’t want to go to the same doctor as my husband if my doctor were likely to discuss me with my husband.
They don’t all do that. Mr. Neville and I go to the same doctor, but she’s never talked about him with me, and AFAIK never discussed me with him. I’m anxious about going to the doctor under the best of circumstances, and I’d really freak out if I thought my doctor was going to talk to my husband about me.
You could try what I did- be so anxious about the test that you’re unable to get much sleep. I don’t really recommend it, lying awake and feeling anxious all night does suck. At least I did get enough sleep that the sleep doctor was able to say he doesn’t think I have sleep apnea.
I hated my CPAP at first, but I felt so good after using it (and it’s been over 10 years now) that I can’t imagine sleeping without it. The nasal pillows are pretty unobtrusive.
But if you have sleep apnea, there’s no way to fool the test into thinking that you don’t.
Fuck, your Dr is liable to blackmail you? fuck him, get another doctor, you don’t seem spinless here, but you are acting like you are. Is it the face to face you can’t handle?
Take it, don’t take it, don’t care either way, but some people are trying to help.
Did I miss where you said why you are so sure you have sleep apnea? Take the test and if you don’t have it everyone will never talk about it again.
If for some reason you’re pretty sure you have it but don’t want this possible diagnosis to impact your other health care you can switch doctors now and withold the information that led your current doctor to recommend this test. If you can’t trust your doctor to keep your personal information confidental from your husband you should switch anyway.
After 25 years of driving a tractor trailer, my medical card and thus employment is now hostage to the decision of a physicians assistant who has decided I need to take a sleep apnea test because I am overweight and my neck is 1/2 inch too much. I must report back to work with a 3 month rather than 2 year medical certification which they do not care for, for this reason only. Push comes to shove and I will be closer to the “ditch” category than the “keeper” category in this poor economy. I will lose my medical card if I do not complete a DOT approved apnea test in the next 3 months. For an ailment that does not occur during my working periods. That I have no symptoms for. A test that has a 75% failure rate requiring treatment with expensive equipment requiring bottled oxygen forever. Oh and most people diagnosed with sleep apnea snore less and feel much better after a whole night of breathing straight or partial 02. A setup of 100% clean and cool oxygen anyone would feel better breathing all night. What a surprise. Continuous positive airway pressure devices hold the airways open so a larger amount in addition to more dense oxygen concentration can be supplied to the lungs and body. Test physicians show clients how many times they stopped breathing during the night after a test to scare them into buying expensive equipment although cases of fatalities from sleep apnea are near non-existent, and then speculate on all the possible benefits from using the equipment that might occur. One way to push reliance on new equipment and technology mankind has managed to live without for thousands of years. I wish it was my decision to take the test or not … you could say it is … but the prospect of looking for a new line of work isn’t very inviting after 25 years. What the heck maybe Obamacare will pay for it and Ill get used to sleeping with it. Or maybe I will be one of the 25% tested who don’t require getting their pockets picked. Fat chance, good pun huh
It most certainly does. Do I understand correctly that you drive truck? Daytime alertness and response time (known medically as “Psychomotor Vigilance”) are negatively impacted by sleep apnea. Truck drivers with untreated sleep apnea are a hazard.
You’re overweight and have an enlarged neck. Those are risk factors, and sometimes symptoms, of sleep apnea.
Tests for sleep apnea have about a 22% failure rate, not 75%.
Most CPAPs are covered under insurance. Even if you have to pay out of pocket, you can find machines for under $500 and/or with financing. How much does a ticket cost if you lose control of your rig and hit a car?
Nope. CPAPs don’t use oxygen.
I think you have a lot of things to discuss with your doctor before you’re informed enough to have ethical refusal.
Here we are back at this again. CPAP technology has advanced greatly in the least decade. I just swapped my old one for a brand spanking new ResMed s9 autosense that I bought of Craigs list for $350 cash. There was no ObamaCare involved. I don’t use a mask at all. It is just tiny nasal pillows secured by an elastic strap that I can put on or take off in less than two seconds. The autosense technology means that the machine is not just a dumb air pump; it monitors your breathing needs and adjusts the flow by the second. I don’t even consider it an intrusion at all. It is much closer to a luxury spa treatment that you get every night. I wake up feeling great every morning.
You can choose to use one or not based on your own needs but you have to make that decision based on factual information rather than assumptions. CPAP’s are much more advanced, lighter, smaller and much more user friendly than the common models even ten years ago and they are likely to improve even more. I strongly recommend the ResMed s9 Autoset for anyone with options.
You are correct that people have lived with sleep apnea for thousands of years. They also died from it just like everything else that modern medicine has come up with a decent solution for. It is not wise to just brush it off when the potential solutions are so effective and accessible today.
Left to my own devices, I would sleep from 08:00 to 15:00. I once had a job on 2nd shift. A joy, but not much money.
I am now retired/disabled. No more schedules to keep.
I was sleeping (nasty benzodiazepine, but I also have puberty-onset insomnia) from 01:00 to 15:00.
Doc insisted I get a sleep test.
I quickly got a CPAP (Medicare/Blue Shield).
Night and day.
I was diving in and out of REM (dream). 70/hour. I was sleeping that long just to get enough REM time to play the dreams.
Sometimes (rarely) I will have a sense of sleepiness (which is NOT normal for me). If I lie down, I get a dream and wake up at the end.
That trick of the body to DEMAND dream time is what makes apnea such a problem.
In the case of a truck zipping down the freeway at 70 mph, I do not want the driver getting a ‘sleep now’ order.
This is not about you. It is about the damned truck. If you were an office worker, a bit of nodding off would not be a concern.
Think of it this way: you are on an airplane with 150 other people. How warm and fuzzy would you be if you knew the pilot was subject to nodding off?
That is how the rest of us think about 72,000 lbs of truck coming up behind us.
he own’s shares in common sense. you’re doctor has concern for your health based on something you said to him.
Your entire opening remark makes no sense. I’ve declined all manner of things suggested by my doctor. Here’s how it would play out: It’s too expensive and I have no problem with sleep at night or being awake during the day.
Clearly the doctor thinks you’re not breathing properly at night and it’s causing you health problems. This may involve more than being awake in the day. You need to communicate with the doctor as to the reason’s behind the test. It’s a big honking deal if you have sleep apnea. My BP dropped substantially upon using it. Not a month later, immediately. I hate the mask but I’m using it because the numbers don’t lie.
You seem to be operating under a number of false premises. First, there are different tests you can take. They can give you a home test which you take home and hook up yourself. If it shows you have sleep apnea your insurance company may insist on a 2nd monitored test to qualify for them paying for the machine. They may then require you rent the machine for 6 months to prove you use it.
This is expensive bullshit. A monitored study will run in the neighborhood of $1,300. You might spend $100 a month in rental fees. Now you’re up to $1,900 and you still don’t have a machine. If you need a machine then the doctor who prescribes it can give you a script that you can use to buy it outright. Instead of $1,900 you can just buy the damn thing for $350 to $500 on the net. Done. you will need to figure out which mask works for you because they are expensive and you need to replace them from time to time.
As was already discussed, the new machines are reactive and will raise the pressure as you breath in. The newer ones will also transmit that information directly to the doctor as well as record it on a memory chip. He will know if you’re using it and if the pressure needs to be changed. All that can be done without you doing anything.
None of us know your medical condition but we do know you’re not trained to make the diagnosis. Take the test, don’t take the test. We don’t care. At this point all your questions have been answered. You should be asking your doctor instead of spending money to fool him. This is an unhealthy relationship that will eventually bite you in the ass.
Honestly, the way you’ve presented your situation it sounds like a pain medication addiction thread.
Our zombie-reviving truck driver (#68) has hit a nerve that’s also slowly but noisily working its way through the pilot community.
A sleep apnea diagnosis can be career ending. It can cost many tens of thousands of dollars in lost wages even if it doesn’t end your career. Or it can be no big deal if you have the right insurance, work for the right company, and have the right physiology.
There is significant suspicion that although there’s a lot of totally legit science behind all this, there’s also a bit of a witch-hunt-du-jour-for-Safety mentality. We have this new tool to measure something that we think has a correlation with safety. So let’s run our whole populace through the test and shit-can the 10% that flunk. Just in case. After all, you can never be too careful where Safety is involved.
While meanwhile other larger safety stuff and health stuff is ignored because it’s either too costly or politically difficult to fix or there’s no easy to use tool to measure it.
The fact that every entity involved except the worker / patient stands to gain from a mistaken or borderline diagnosis of apnea doesn’t help the atmospherics (heh) of this thing.
The disease (disability?) is real. The current FAA / DOT testing & zero-tolerance disqualification regime when aggressively applied to very borderline cases is not. What seems to be lacking from the current stampede is a sense of proportion. And anything resembling due process.
All of which has diddly beans to do with the long departed OP and her opioids, deceits, & phobias.
The OP was last seen *in this thread *in post #32 on 7-30-2011. That’s almost 2/3rds of the thread ago, two revivals ago, and five and a half years ago.
Whatever else she may’ve done on the 'Dope since was not the point of my comment.
Though frankly I’m surprised she’s still around. The OP post and the early replies had all the earmarks of a one-visit wonder and it’s not a name I recognize. Though I now see she joined in 2002 so that wasn’t post#1 for her. I assume she hangs out in forums I don’t. Carry on.
