When did you first begin to suspect that you had apnea?

[PollCat]

About a year before I started receiving therapy, my wife started nagging me that I'd quit breathing during the night and she'd have to poke me to get me going again. I also found that I was starting to doze at work after lunch and especially on the drives home from work. After a rumble strip wakes you up on the drive home, you come to the realization that something may be wrong.

[darth_vapor]

I suspected it in 2007, but was too lazy to go to a doctor to get checked. Started forgetting things (I used to be a trivia champ in university so this was extremely unusual for me), started losing concentration at work, got stressed out, started making mistakes, got fired in 2013. I thought it was due to overstress, so took a year off and lived off savings. Got another job and still couldnt concentrate and was performing poorly. Then got into a relationship last year and she was unable to sleep due to my extremely loud snoring. She nagged me to check and I finally got an appointment, which resulted in a sleep test and then I got the diagnosis of an AHI of 74.1 in February.

[AshSF]

I have snored all my life but I believe I went into severe apnea territory about 5 years ago. The symptom that started 5 yrs ago was nocturia. Thankfully, no other symptoms like high BP developed.

Got diagnosed last year and been 100% compliant with cpap for 200+ days now. Nocturia was gone on Day 1 of cpap. Now I am seeing changes in my mental capacities as well.

[DariaVader]

My husband's been complaining that I didnt breathe at night for 35 yrs, but i never listened to him ... I sorta knew that it might be apnea, but I was actually fairly unaware of apnea. About 5 yrs ago when I changed primary care doc, the new doc started mentioning a sleep test every couple of visits, but she didnt push and neither did I. More recently BP started escalating in spite of drugs, and this time when she brought it up, I got the sleep test! After the fact, I realize that I probably never didn't have it. As a child I had swallowing issues as well, and could not eat solid food until age 3 (Doctor's very much wanted to operate at birth - mother wouldnt allow. Surgery on a newborn was really dangerous in 1958 and mother had an emergency appendectomy which burst as they were removing it at age 13 --- with no anaesthesia other than a little nitrous oxide! - she was *terrified* of surgery!)

[nativedancer]

despite some classic symptoms -- daytime drowsiness, getting up a lot at night, and my wife used to complain about the snoring -- I didn't consider apnea, and frankly felt it was some kind of scam. Until. Until one morning I didn't wake up. My son found me unconscious and unresponsive, and called 911. I finally woke up in the ER, under oxygen and spent a couple days in the hospital. I had experienced a severe COPD episode, and the doc said that unless I wanted to keep returning to the hospital frequently, it would behoove me to have a sleep study, which I did, and found I had rather severe sleep apnea. And so the journey began ...I've been under the mask now for about 8 months, with varying degrees of success. But my life has changed for the better. And this forum has helped a great deal in allaying my fears and superstitions and concerns.

[DeepBreathing]

I had all the symptoms (including nodding off at the wheel, and once in a meeting with my boss) but never thought I had apnea. I have fibromyalgia, always slept poorly with terrible insomnia, low thyroid production, frequent night time bathroom breaks, and a few other comorbidities. I also snored but SWMBO said I never stopped breathing or gasped for breath. With this history I always assumed it was down to the fibromyalgia and all that went with it.

It was a cardiologist who got me to go for a sleep test - I was having ectopic ventricular contractions, which she said was almost certainly due to apnea. Sure enough I had an AHI of 62, about 50% centrals. Makes me wonder what SWMBO thought was going on?

After more than a year & a half on the hose, things are much improved, but I wouldn't say everything's perfect. The insomnia's gone - I find I can drop off to sleep pretty much straight away within a few seconds of putting the mask on. I don't often wake up with a headache and I don't go to the bathroom four times a night. I still find it hard to use the machine all night - I still wake up sometimes to find I've turned it off but don't remember doing so. But for the average 4 or 5 hours a night that I do keep it on my AHI is always below 2 and usually below 1.

It's a slow journey but I'm getting there.

[Veilsd]

I knew when my wife left me!

[snowdrop]

I've always been a terrible sleeper - insomnia, frequent waking, etc. - every since I was a child.

The last few years though, I had been really, really tired. Exhausted. Foggy headed. More headaches than usual (had those since I was a kid too). I'm a nurse, so I knew about apnea and the risk factors. I just didn't think they applied to me. I'm in my early 30's, don't snore, don't wake up gasping, falling asleep while sitting/driving, or anything that like. There were lots of other possible causes that seemed more likely - like the severe anemia I discovered I had. Or the fact that I had just had 5 babies in 7 years. Or that I do shift work.

My doc suggested doing a sleep study and low and behold moderate sleep apnea.

[ArthurLaurent]

About five years ago. My sisters and I booked adjoining hotel rooms for a family reunion. After the first night, one of my sisters said I stopped breathing "a lot of times" during the night, and snorted coming out of each one. So I had a sleep study done. Showed lots of OSAs and some CSAs, more than 61 episodes in an average hour, with O2 saturation down to the sixties.

I'd never been bothered by it. Multiple sleep partners had never been bothered by it. I've sleep this way (lots of apneas) since I was a kid. I was always waking up in the middle of the night for no reason.

I never slept much (3 to 4 hours per night), and I always felt rested the next day. With the machine, and some meds, I can sleep 7 or 8 hours (If I don't have the alarm clock set, up to 12 hours) at a time.

I work from 9 pm to 5 am (I've always liked working nights), so the sleep charts looked weird to my doc when she first saw them.

I don't feel any different after five years of CPAP/BiPAP/ASV machines (three and counting). But the numbers keep looking better, so I guess the therapy must be doing some good. I keep on the machine because it makes my doctor happy, and it's easy to do. It's good to keep your doctor happy.

[leximorph19]

I have always been sleepy all my life, as far as I could remember.
I thought I was just different that way.


I could easily doze in the middle of the sermon or a lecture or while listening to a long-winded conversation. I thought it was because I get bored easily.

Eight years ago I had a car accident after a few seconds of microsleep.
It was a miracle both me and my wife survived as we were both sleep
-deprived after many days staying late at the hospital looking after her dad, who died that year.

Early this year, the cardiologist put me on a 24-hour blood pressure monitor - and discovered that I had a non-dipping BP during sleep time. He just asked one question : do you snore? I said, as loud as a foghorn. He suspected apnea.

This was when I started reading up on apnea, then discovering this wonderful, informative forum, until I started living the life of a hosehead.