Rest Isn’T History Yet

A technician from Spokane Home Healthcare is coming tomorrow to take away my rented Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine.

Thank you - thank you - thank you!

My doctors prescribed use of the machine to treat obstructive sleep apnea.

“Sleep apnea is a disorder that causes people to stop breathing frequently for short periods while sleeping,” according to the product literature that came with the machine. “If left untreated, sleep apnea increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart problems, and stroke.”

How well I know. I’ve had all of the above except a stroke. But this machine may be worse. It looks like a cannister-type vacuum cleaner, right down to an actual vacuum cleaner hose. You strap this contraption to your face using a nozzle and harness resembling a gas mask.

For the past month, I’ve spent my nights wrestling with this monstrosity and trying to catch a wink or two, while being force-fed air under “continuous positive pressure” up my nose and down my throat.

After four weeks of this, my throat is raw. My nostrils are blocked worse than ever. My face hurts. And sleep continues to elude me? Fun - fun - fun.

But help may be within reach, thanks to a medical miracle.

I don’t know how many years I’ve complained to my doctor about a nasal obstruction. He diagnosed my problem as an allergic reaction and prescribed various nose sprays. Several years ago, he sent me to an ear, nose and throat doctor who gave me some more nose spray.

Then, a year or so ago, skimming the news wires at work, I came across a series of articles on a new surgical breakthrough called Somnoplasty that uses radio waves to combat life-threatening obstructive sleep apnea.

I never dreamed I had sleep apnea. All I knew was that something in my nasal passages seemed to shift from side to side and front to back, blocking my airway as I tossed and turned in my sleep. For the past few years, I’ve had to sleep partially sitting up in order to get any rest at all.

After stumbling across Somnoplasty, I stepped up pressure on my general practitioner at Group Health and finally secured a referral to an independent pulmonologist. A cut-away anatomical model of the nasal passages in his exam room instantly pinpointed my problem - enlarged inferior turbinates, fleshy tissues associated with the sinuses.

The pulmonologist tested me, expressed concern that I might also suffer from apnea originating in the soft palate, base of the tongue or throat, and recommended a sleep study. Months passed. I pressured my doctor and Group Health managers for a sleep study. At last, I got a green light - surprising even my doctor.

The sleep study was another nightmare. No matter. It showed I stopped breathing around 20 times an hour, or every three minutes. But this report, too, languished. I pressured Group Health again, and was referred to another ear, nose and throat specialist, who confirmed the diagnosis of enlarged inferior turbinates and obstructive sleep apnea in the area of the soft palate or throat. Back I went to my doctor, who referred me to the pulmonologist again, who got me hooked up with this infernal machine.

Somnoplasty stiffens and shrinks floppy tissue in the nasal passages, soft palate, base of the tongue and throat. It’s a relatively non-invasive, painless and low-cost procedure performed on an outpatient basis in Billings, Boise, Richland, throughout the West Coast and across the country, but not Spokane.

I subscribe to Group Health’s Option Plan, which costs more but allows me to go outside the system for treatment if I pay 20 percent of the cost. As I see it, Group Health can refer me for treatment elsewhere under its standard plan, or make me pay 20 percent under my Options Plan.

So far I have been unable to get answers.

The moral here is threefold: No doubt many readers suffer from undiagnosed sleep apnea. There’s a revolutionary new treatment. To get help, you have to be patient, push and persevere.