Posted by often_awake on April 12, 2011 at 12:45:17:No new threads since my last one, 5 weeks ago. That's too bad; I really enjoyed reading this forum in its heyday.
A lot has happened in the past 5 weeks. I had turbinate reduction surgery, which turned out to be pretty minor. I did have general anesthesia, but was reasonably alert just a couple of hours after the surgery was completed. Besides the usual gunk in my nose for a couple of weeks, I was back to normal quickly.
Soon after that, I went through a phase in which I was waking up after 5 hours every night. I started taking Ambien, but while that did help me fall asleep quickly, I still woke up after 5 hours. I took a sliver of Ambien after waking up, but that made me groggy the next day.
Finally, about 2-3 weeks ago, I decided to stop all use of Ambien and caffeine. I also rarely drink alcohol. That seems to have helped: most nights since then, I've been sleeping 7-8 hours.
How's my sleep? It's hard to say. I generally sleep soundly the first half of the night and am somewhat restless the second half. My guess is that I'm getting decent to good stage 3 sleep and fragmented REM sleep. In terms of symptoms associated with sleep apnea, I've noticed a marked improvement. I never wake up gasping for air, I almost never wake up covered in perspiration, and when I wake up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, it's because I really have to use the bathroom (and not because I was starved for air and my body had some kind of fight-or-flight response).
I'll probably have my sleep study at 6 months. Right now, my overall sense is that I have mild sleep apnea. Things seem slightly worse when I sleep on my back or use anything that relaxes my muscles at night (magnesium supplements, 5htp, ...). When I can avoid those things, I sleep better. Dr KL says that my airway is huge, and that there would be little benefit to having more surgery. It may be that there will be additional improvements the next few months.
I've come to believe that in my own case, there was probably more going on than just sleep apnea. I had become quite run down physically over the past few years before the surgery. I was probably exercising too much, drinking too much coffee, working too hard, and generally stressing myself out. Adding severe sleep apnea to the mix didn't help. I've heard that adrenal fatigue isn't a real disease, but that certainly describes how I feel right now. So, while the sleep apnea feels like it's better under control, I still have problems with fatigue.
On the plus side, I've learned a lot about how to help myself sleep. I've been using blue light in the morning, orange glasses (to filter out the blue light; my wife was a bit nonplussed, but I like them) at night, no food after dinner, magnesium supplements, etc. I feel that all of these things, and more generally, taking sleep seriously and trying to figure out what works best for me, are much better than just reaching for an espresso every few hours.
One final comment. A lot of people have said that this surgery is a really big deal, and one should only consider it after failing CPAP with 5 masks, etc. I don't know about that. It may be true for some or even most people, but for me, this surgery was not as bad as I expected. The pain was bad the first week, but it was nothing compared with the fatigue coming from sleep apnea. I have no numbness outside of my upper teeth, and haven't had any for a while. Even that is already getting better. The only things I don't like are my newly widened nose and my upper jaw, and these are offset to some degree by my improved lower jaw.
Thanks for reading! Comments welcome!
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