Chapter Three: Sleep Apnea

When I was in middle school, my dad went to a sleep doctor. He, too, had bizarre sleeping patterns. Even I looked normal, comparatively. Perhaps the most notable (and bizarre) was his sleep walking habits. (In one particularly memorable incident, he chased a nonexistent car through our front yard at 2 a.m.!)

In many ways, I would've never known how unusual our own habits were if it weren't for my mom and sister pointing it out. It was around this time that I also developed a slight jealously when it came to my mom and sister's sleeping habits. Both were 'morning people' by my standards. Able to get out of bed and become immediately productive they also never slept through their alarms. To this day I've never seen my mom fall asleep in a car, and even sleeping on the couch was unusual for her.

Once, before either of us was diagnosed, my mom and sister were at their wit's end. As I said before, sleeping in a different bed often triggered the walking. While vacationing at Fort Wilderness, the Disney World campground, we had to use a rental camper because ours was in the repair shop. That night, I "woke up" (slept walked) and wandered to my dad's bed where I frantically began patting him down. I was convinced by my dream world that he'd been looking at my 'smashed penny' collection in the bed. [To other, non-Southern families, that's a souvenir pressed penny.] I was loudly accusing him of dropping and losing all of my smashed pennies. He, half awake himself, began arguing with me until everyone was awake and now aggravated.

Having had enough, mom yelled at both of us to go back to sleep. Just an hour later, my dad was up and walking, too; digging frantically through our first aid kit in search of a 'jack' because his own dream world had convinced him the jack from beneath the camper had fallen.

Again, my mom was roused from her own sleep, and argued with him until he also returned to bed. Much to the chagrin of my mom and sister, neither my father nor I had any memory of the incident, claiming to have slept like babies ourselves.

Besides the wild sleep walking, he had other concerning habits. He often took multiple afternoon naps, snored like a freight train, struggled to wake up in the mornings, and most concerning, stopped breathing while he was asleep. Ultimately, these things combined and he wasn't sleeping well—seriously affecting his quality of life.

My mom, the model sleeper, was also sleeping poorly, often awoken in the middle of the night by his snoring or choking, and feeling exhausted the following day. Because they were both exhausted, they tried lots of other 'solutions' first...new pillows, a new mattress, blackout curtains, etc. Neither being able to pinpoint exactly what the problem was.

Finally, he decided to seek professional treatment for his sleep problems. Whether this decision was from his sleepless nights, or my mother's instance, remains a common debate at family gatherings.

Following a nighttime test I would later take myself, he was diagnosed with sleep apnea, a condition that wasn't as well known in those years as it is now.

The Mayo Clinic defines sleep apena as, "a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts." He was given a mask to wear while sleeping that forced air into his passages.

His test results actually showed particularly disturbing data. Not only was he not breathing during his sleep, but he would stop breathing for several minutes at a time, sometimes up to a dozen times with an hour. 

I was 10 or 11 at this time and remember only pieces about the details of his diagnosis. What I do remember is the time period following the diagnosis: family members and friends would run into him and spend an eternity telling him how good he looked, how well rested. I remember my parents discussing how well they were sleeping now, and how much energy they had during the day. For some reason it had never quite occurred to my young mind just how important sleep really was: how much of an impact it could have on you during the day.

Although he sometimes gets tired of the hassle of the mask, he truly needs it. This was proven just a few years ago, while on vacation. He'd left the mask at home on accident and didn't discover it was missing until we'd reached our destination, about 2 hours from home. That morning we woke up to find he was missing. At 2 a.m. he decided he couldn't take it anymore and drove the two hours back home to get the mask!

His decision to seek treatment after so many years turned out to be life-changing, but almost didn't happen! At the time, going to a 'sleep doctor' was unusual at best. Sleep disorders in general weren't as well known back then.

Sleep apnea has gained some fame since and is more well known--leading others to seek treatment sooner. I hope the same will eventually be true with narcolepsy. In fact, following my dad's diagnosis, his mother went in for a sleep test as well, only to discover she also had narcolepsy!

It sounds strange that this was the beginning of my own diagnosis; but it did set the wheels in motion. My dad and I had always shared a lot of weird sleeping habits. After his diagnosis, my mom learned more about sleep disorders, and, for the first time, started worrying about me, and my similar symptoms. 

Looking back, I've often asked her why she didn't pursue it sooner. Her explanation is logical: I didn't stop breathing while I was asleep (we hadn't yet discovered narcolepsy), I was still very young, and I was performing well socially and academically.

Later, we would discover that, like many other diseases, sleep disorders have a propensity to run in families. For now, my symptoms weren't enough cause for concern.