CPAP

Well on Friday night I went into St Luke's Hospital for a test with a CPAP machine - which is designed to help people with a sleep apnea problem. It was an odd experience - made simpler by the wonderful "Hi, I'm Lena and I'll be your sleep technologist this evening". The system is designed to maintain a regular pressure in your throat/airways to keep them open while you sleep - and alleviate the symptoms of apnea. Not sure if it made the snoring go away, but I certainly did wake up a little more refreshed - and this persisted throughout the day. I'm supposed to have an appointment with the specialist in 6 weeks - but I'll need to ring before then because I want one of those machines now (and to get one I need to know what pressure worked for me - that was the purpose of the night in hospital - so they could test various pressures and see which was best. I think they would determine this based on how many times I didn't stop breathing - as opposed to the 22 to 28 times an hour I stopped breathing for my original test). Of course, there is a slight issue about sleeping with the mask ... because what if your partner wants to wear it!
The other thing about sleep studies though is that if you don't take your nail polish remover or acetone to the hospital and then go out into the real world - you spend the day looking as though someone has sneezed on the back of your head (from where they attach electrodes to your head with superglue!).