Is sleep apnea holding you back?

I have dealt with sleep apnea for the past 10 years. If you have read my blog (and I hope that you have) you will know that I have been to several doctors and I have tried both the cpap and the bipap without much luck. This past year has been rough for me because I am still trying to get my meniere’s disease under control. I have had some success; this year has been a lot better than last year. So that’s good. But in the back of my mind I always think of how much sleep apnea has held me back.

But this feeling isn’t anything new. I knew that I had a problem with my sleeping because my wife had mentioned how strange my snoring was and I also was extremely tired each morning. In 1999, I started on my quest to finding the solution to my sleep apnea problems and that first attempt was definitely a failure. The cpap experience was bad. Looking back I probably could have tried harder but that mask just wasn’t going to work. I then ignored the problem as best I could for another 2 years till I heard about the bipap. I thought that would be the thing that would work for me. Alas, it wasn’t to be, another failure.
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When my son was born I felt that I had to keep trying to make the cpap work. My lack of sleep was extremely tough on me especially because you need all the rest you can when you have a baby in the house. So I went on a few more sleep studies and saw a few more doctors and still no progress.

About 5 years ago was when the Meniere’s disease hit me and the sleep apnea took a back seat. Meniere’s disease is an inner ear disorder that has severe vertigo episodes, but unlike vertigo there isn’t a cure.

This all leads me up to right now, like I said earlier my meniere’s is better and I have to start once again to work on my sleep apnea problem. A little while back I wrote in a post that the last doctor I spoke to said that it was either to get the cpap to work or have the surgery. Not the laser surgery, but the kind where the jaw is repositioned. I don’t want to do that because I have read many times over that that kind of surgery has a high failure rate plus there is a wicked recovery time.

So…I need to stop the procrastination and stop letting the sleep apnea hold me back from the things that I should be doing. Not to mention, the risk that I am taking by allowing the sleep apnea to stop my breathing many, many times each night.

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