SNORK!

So this afternoon I spent an extended period of time in consultation with a specialist about my terrible sleep habits. He has diagnosed me, with a VERY high confidence level, as having sleep apnoea and needing attention because of it. I was pretty much expecting this, especially after having more than one girlfriend say “Hey, did you know you stop breathing lots when you’re asleep?”.

In order to check out what was going wrong, he stuck a skinny bendy camera scope thing up my nose, and all around my sinuses. In order to do this without me losing my mind, he first anesthetized … my nose.

This rates pretty highly on the Peculear Sensations-O-Meter, I can tell you straight up. The numbness extends into your sinuses. That whole area feels like a void. That’s some fucked up shit, right there.

Anyway, he’s getting me set up with a sleep study device, which has wires and clips and plugs and THE MATRIX HAS YOU NEO and you get it all set up and then sleep as normally as you can while it gathers telemetry. He is about 100% sure that this will lead to me being given a positive pressure darth vader mask which I will have to wear while sleeping from now on in order to Not Die. Apparently in accelerating cases like mine, there is a risk of simply slipping into an oxygen depravation coma – not cool.

(I’d just to take this opportunity to point out to Chris R that he may have had an RFID implant in his hand, but that I now NEED TECHNOLOGY TO LIVE. BEAT THAT AND STAY FASHIONABLE, BITCH!)

I don’t want to get too excited about the possible upside, but he seems to think that the results of me using this device will be very VERY noticable. Could I actually one day wake up refreshed and clear-headed? Dare I dream it could be so?

11 Comments

  1. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/08/health.sleepapnoea – just read this today, about a guy who’d been sleeping a total of 15 minutes a night – check the results!

  2. It’s better with anaesthetic.

  3. If you die because you SLEPT WRONG I will be SO CROSS.

    I hope you get your Vader-mask pronto 🙂

  4. Will be very interested in how it goes, I will probably need to do the same.

  5. Ahhhh… I love it when you make with the funny 🙂

    Good luck with the Vader Mask.

  6. Wow, that is scary. I hope that they also give you advice on how to fix the reasons you have sleep apnoea rather than just masking the problem (no pun intended!)

  7. Yay for being one step closer to better sleep.

  8. You are so freakin awesome. The Vader mask must only make you awesomer.
    Good luck with everything and I look forward to hearing how good a nights sleep you start having soon!

  9. I’ve had the “Nasal Camera Exploration with Anesthesia” too and can confirm that it is, indeed, a very strange sensation. Especially when the anesthetic drips down the back of your nasal passage and anesthetises your throat. That’s some fucked up shit alright.
    We missed you at SSGCE