Sleep labs help knock the lights out of apnea

Sometimes listening to your wife can be the best orders any doctor can give to you - especially when it comes to your health.

"My wife was after me for a long time to get a sleep study done," said Delbert Larsen. "She told me I'd stop breathing at night while I was sleeping."

Often, Larsen said he would wake up on his own because he had stopped breathing and have to force himself to breathe. He never recalled dreams or even slept deeply enough to dream, he said.

Larsen, 60, said he often had trouble staying awake during the day, but that didn't even get him to seek medical attention. Larsen is a retired traveling salesman who now farms 70 acres of corn.

"What really got me to go was when I'd fall asleep working the corn," he said. "I'd nod off driving a tractor."

The danger he felt nodding off while tending to his fields made him go to the Fremont Area Medical Center's sleep lab for a sleep study when he was 59.

"A sleep lab is like a hotel room," said Brian Brodd, director of cardiopulmonary services at FAMC. "We watch (the patient) live with an infrared camera to see if the patient stops breathing."

Jane Brown, a respiratory therapist at FAMC who conducts sleep studies, said she monitors patients to hear if they are snoring.

"Sometimes snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea," she said.

Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles in the throat relax during sleep and collapse on themselves, obstructing the flow of air to the lungs. When this airflow is stopped for a period of 10 to 30 seconds, a person with sleep apnea briefly wakes up or is roused to a lighter level of sleep and the throat muscles regain their normal tone, allowing for normal breathing again. Brown said most patients don't notice on their own that they stop breathing during sleep - a spouse normally is the one to notice.

However, there are symptoms to watch for such as excessive daytime sleepiness, loud snoring, awakening with a dry mouth or sore throat and morning headaches.

Brodd said a physician should be contacted if snoring is loud enough to disturb the sleep of others - especially if followed by a period of silence, if there are intermittent pauses in breathing during sleep or if you suffer daytime drowsiness that can cause you to fall asleep during everyday activities.

This can lead to car accidents, injuries or even death.

Brown looks for this stoppage of breathing from another room while the patient is in the sleep lab.

"The patient has to have 35 events when they stop breathing or slow breathing and then we put a C-PAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask on," she said.

When Larsen took the test, he stopped breathing enough times to have the air mask placed over his face.

"When they put that breathing machine on for two hours, I felt like a new man," he said.

The C-PAP breathing machine forces air passages open continuously during sleep. Once Larsen's respiratory therapist determined he was a candidate for the machine, his insurance company was contacted and paid for most of the approximately $1,350 cost.

He now uses the C-PAP breathing machine every night and said that after a few days, he didn't even know he was wearing the mask.

"My wife said I have way too much energy now that I have it," Larsen said. "I call it my dream machine because I can dream again and sometimes I even have young dreams."

He said he's able to do a lot more without getting tired and even drive as far as Arizona without his wife getting behind the wheel.

"Before (the C-PAP), I'd sleep and my wife would drive," Larsen said. "I forgot the machine one night since I bought it and I had the most miserable night I've ever had."

He said the C-PAP has made a great improvement in his quality of life.

"The only thing it interferes with is I have to remember to kiss my wife before I put it on," he joked. "People don't realize how much it can improve your life. I didn't think I had anything wrong with my life before, but now I feel completely different."

Dodd said if you suffer any symptoms of sleep apnea to first consult your personal physician. If the doctor believes a sleep study is necessary he will write a prescription for the study and a date for the study can be set up with the FAMC cardiopulmonary department.