no road that ain't a hard road

Absolutely amazing. The feeling I have as I'm reading these stories and yelling out loud to myself. "I knew it!", "See!", "I know exactly what you mean!" Posting after posting. At the same time I'm angry, frustrated and sick of feeling this way.
I have had trouble sleeping for as long as I can remember. Nightmares, night sweats, insomnia, headaches, daytime sleepiness and that generalized shitty feeling I've heard many of you describe. My parents were less than supportive or understanding of these problems so I suffered through them silently for years. It wasn't until I became sexually active in my late(very late) teens that someone finally told me that I repeatedly stopped breathing in my sleep. Still, it never occured to me to mention it to a doctor. In my early 20's I was attacked and beaten severely while I was sleeping adding post traumatic stress complications to the mix. My sleep problems became unmanageable after I got married and in trying to resolve them myself I first heard about apnea. At my request my family doctor gave me a referal to a sleep clinic and I had my first assesment. The doctor at the clinic gave me my results using words like "alarming" and "atypical". I can't remember any of the numbers but I qualified for full coverage for a CPAP machine. My first run at it was a complete disaster. Leaks, mouth breathing, dryness, nightime launching of the apparatus, hyper ventilation, stomach cramps and so on and so forth. The complaints to the clinic resulted in a second session. As I mentioned before I am a very light sleeper and so had difficulty in dealing with all the electrodes and the mask during the second session. My attempts at discussing this with the attending technician resulted in a red card for you soccer fans or a game misconduct for you hockey fans or "the boot" to the rest of you. Admittedly, a symptom of my sleep deprivation is a short fuse so the technician isn't totally responsible for the unfortunate result. I didn't go back and tried to resolve my problems myself and things got decidedly worse. The CPAP fell off my nightstand and when I tried to turn it on again it made a funny noise so it found a new home in the closet. I became a police officer and our daughter was diagnosed with a kidney disorder so my stress levels went up and sleep became barely a notion to me for the next couple of years. My stress recognition and management skills were virtually non-existant and I beleive my apnea got worse. I woke up one night in my closet wrestling with my bathrobe and made an appointment with my doctor the next day. We decided to try a sleep-aid called amitryptaline(sp?) which I believe triggered a series of anxiety and panic attacks which saw me take some time off work and sent me on a very interesting exploration of spirituality and mental health. My family doctor prescribed Paxil and gave me some lorazepam in case I had any unmanageable panic attacks. I'm happy to say I only lasted 5 days on the Paxil and never touched the lorazepam although I was comforted knowing I had it if I felt compeled to run naked through the produce section screaming profanities and hurling broccoli. Buddhist meditation and some of the teachings are far and away the best medicine I've encountered for the psychological sleep problems I deal with every day and every night. Like many of you discovered with the CPAP masks though, the answers are highly personal and highly subjective. So with that stuff under control I'm back to the physical problem of apnea. I've sent my remstar plus with humidifier back to the company for repairs and made another appointment with the sleep diagnostic center. Which I'm feeling exponentially more prepared for after reading your postings. I'm off to search the net now for more info on autopap, c-flex, the "Breeze" and the activa.
One of the three jewels of buddhist life is the sangha which is loosely "community". Thank you.

I registered although the author says guest my username is sleepdemons.

You're a police officer??? Would you please post where and when you're on the beat, so, you know...we can, like, avoid being there at that time and place? Seriously, be persistent and listen to your body's needs, tell your doctor, and along with his support make the necessary adjustments to your equipment so you can be more fulfilled spiritually and physically. Dani