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Sleep Study

I suffer from sleep apnea. This was confirmed in my one and only sleep study on November 18, 2003. I now sleep with a CPAP breathing machine, enjoy REM sleep regularly, and no longer hallucinate from sleep deprivation or suffer from hypoxic headaches every morning.

It is such an improvement over the hell my life was becoming as the lack of REM sleep degraded my ability to do my job. My wife was able to cover for my lapses with respect to family life but I feared that I would no longer be able to drive safely. As I have an hour commute my logistics were going to become more and more difficult. Far scarier was the idea of risking my kids by driving them.

It is hard being so dependent on a machine to work correctly to function. When we travel I am unable to relax until the CPAP is set up near my bedside with an accessible outlet for power. 

Then again, I depend on an increasing number of medications to manage my hypertension and diabetes, so it all merges into a sense of my own fragility.

This comes to mind as I will be wanting to replace my current CPAP which I've had for too long now. My physician urged me to get a new sleep study for more accurate settings before being willing to prescribe one. The sleep study will begin after work today.  

I do not like being observed while I sleep but at least the food will be bad. (Actually as an outpatient I will need to feed myself before and after.)

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