Posted by eyeswideopen on January 04, 2005 at 13:43:37:

I would really appreciate it if anyone out there could give me some advice. I am new to this site and this is my first posting.
I am a 40 year old female and have suffered from insomnia for about 20 years. The problem always used to be that I was a light sleeper and any sound would wake me up, and I would find it hard to get to sleep again, but if I was somewhere quiet I could sleep right through the night. For the past 20 years I have used Phenergan, a sedating anti-histamine to help me sleep. A year ago the problem became much worse. I am now living somewhere quiet so no noise is waking me up but I fall asleep OK but keep waking up all through the night as much as every 15 minutes and often can't get to sleep again once this has happened several times. I am not overweight but my boyfriend says that I snore sometimes quite loudly. I never wake up choking but just wake suddenly with my heart hammering and sometimes get very hot in the night. I had a home sleep study done and the result was 32 hypopneas in 3 hours of sleep, 2 central, and 30 hypopneas, with reduction in breathing by 50% and oxygen desat 4-8%. The sleep doc said that it was caused by post Ebstein Barr virus (which I had first when I was a teenager). She said it wasn't bad enough to put me on CPAP. A few months later I had polysomnography done in hospital but i couldn't get to sleep so I took a Nitrazepam which knocked me out. The results were only 2 obstructive hypopneas in 5 hours of sleep and reported only mild snoring. There was intermittent alpha intrusion on the EEG channels. It also showed 68 limb movements not associated with apnea or hypopnea and 19 arousals with limb movements. The total number of limb movements in periodic limb movement sequence was 25. Respiratory arousals were 2, LM arousals were 18 and spontaneous arousals were 111. My average oxygen saturation during wake was 97% and the same for sleep with the lowest saturation being 93%. The sleep docs diagnosis was no important sleep disordered breathing, mild snoring but some periodic limb movements and diagnosed probably plmd. He put me on Clonazepam which I have been on for a year but it makes me depressed and I started taking 0.5mg but now have to take double that for it to work. I discovered I was pregnant 2 months ago and have had to come off the Clonazepam and am having a terrible time. I wake up every 15 mins and I am sure it's more hypopnea than the twitching legs. Boyfriend says he doesn't notice the twitching. I am depressed and desperately tired. I pleaded to try CPAP and he gave me a Remstar Auto to try and set it on number 6 but I still wake up with it and it seems to do no good at all. In desperation I am having another polysomnography done soon to see if I can get a definite diagnosis. I am concerned that first study showed 10 hypopneas an hour but second study only showed 2 in 5 hours of sleep - how can there be such a discrepancy. Saw an ENT who said I had a rather large tongue and large uvula but he couldn't see a reason for operating. I also suffer from constant post nasal drip. Can anyone shed some light on what is going on as I am really quite depressed about all this. Sorry for this being such a long posting.

Follow Ups:

• Re: Frequent awakenings, hypopnea, help Sleepy Time Time 14:05 1/04/05 (1)
  • Re: Frequent awakenings, hypopnea, help eyeswideopen 07:41 1/11/05 (0)
• Re: Frequent awakenings, hypopnea, help Jake 13:51 1/04/05 (1)
  • Re: Frequent awakenings, hypopnea, help eyeswideopen 07:37 1/11/05 (0)

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