Posted by pgrovetom on August 23, 2008 at 14:15:20:Long ago, I posted on this board completely baffled by my sleep problems. I was fatigued and couldn't sleep. When I did, I woke up, felt awful etc... Everything pointed at OSA so I had gone to Stanford Sleep Lab as they are one of the best. I paid some ridiculous amount for that study and psychological work proposed as my solution. I was given a prescription for a CPAP machine because I was suspicious something wasn't right. I just couldn't sleep with the machine so I gave up and eventually tried every other approach and medication possible. I ended up struggling with the addictive/tolerance/side effects problems caused by many of the sleep drugs. It was a nightmare.
Eventually, after being told how dramatically I snore and the nature of the sounds I did make while sleeping, when I could, I began to believe that the sleep study must be wrong. After thinking about it for a while, it dawned on me that OSA is a mechanical problem and that maybe the night at Stanford was a good night where my pillow and body position just happened to lessen my OSA to 5.3 events per hour or mild OSA- not to worry!. I thought that maybe it varies every night and Stanford just caught me on a good night. How could I test my hypothesis given sleep studies are so expensive and I couldn't afford 10 nights or more to test my idea. The doctors all frowned at me. How dare I challenge the accepted approach - even if simple common sense showed the glaring hole, so large a 747 could fly through it.
A primary indicator of OSA was to stop breathing until my brain forced me to awaken all night long. Was there any way to monitor this inexpensively, reliably and with statistical significance? One key test at Stanford was watching my blood oxygen level drop as a result of not breathing for 30 seconds or more. Most of the events they recorded came along with this oxygen drop or de-saturation and a rise in my heart rate.
I looked around and found a pulse-oximeter that recorded my O2 level and my heart rate continuously all night. It allowed me to download the night's results into my PC and see a nice graph of O2 level and heart rate all night long. I purchased the SPO Medical PulseOx 7500 for about $400 ( cheap compared to my Stanford and medication bills) and tested myself over about 20 nights. It became almost immediately obvious that my hypothesis was correct. My events per night ranged from about 40 to over 200 with most nights over 100. 40 events over 7 hours is just about exactly the 5.3 mild OSA that Stanford measured but 200 is severe OSA. For less than $500 I had proven that I had severe OSA that was mis-diagnosed.
The mechanical nature of OSA had fooled the one night sleep study mis-directing me and the doctors. Anyone with a little engineering background familiar with statistics, can see the gapping hole in the one night sleep study strategy. Cost is of course what drives that but I'm shocked such an easy solution is not common. Its a real failure of the medical system and reminds me of what they said about 911. "911was a failure of imagination". That sure sounds like what I saw with sleep studies and many doctors belief systems.
ANYONE with sleep problems and especially those who have been told they snore, should buy or borrow a PulseOx 7500 and run the test for at least 10-20 nights. If you see that many of your nights are filled with de-saturations and heart rate jumps like me, you need to press your doctor to take it seriously. This evidence worked for me.
I found a top OSA surgeon, explained my history, showed him the graphs and without another sleep study, performed surgery on me 12 days later and I have never been back to this forum. It worked! My speculation I had severe misdiagnosed OSA was caught with some imagination and a pulse-oximeter for less than $500 plus some some free effort on my part. The surgery was a complete success and 1 1/2 years later, I sleep well, never wake up, snore much less and don't need medication to sleep. I just ran a 3 night check with my pulse-oximeter and I'm still running about 5-10 events PER NIGHT down from 40-200. Its a miracle.
If you can understand my story and are struggling, find a way to get a PC and SPO Medical PulseOx 7500 and test yourself or get somebody computer and testing savvy to help you. It might save your life or at least get you some statistically significant data to add to your puzzle. My bet is on saving your life given the number of mis-diagnosed OSA cases I read about. I'd hazard a guess that 1/2 the people on this Forum who haven't been diagnosed clearly, are stuck in a situation with undiagnosed OSA.
Hope this helps someone!
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