Overwhelmed...

OVERWHELMED

To say the least...overwhelmed...I guess I misunderstood the tech after my sleep study.  When he said Sleep Hypopnea I thought that was better than Sleep Apnea... Well apparently there is more than one way to look at a sleep study...

I got to my Neurologist this morning and I had my speech all ready... My #1 concern is my Lupus and Fibro but my MEMORY is failing me more and more and of course my headaches and talking in my sleep at night.  I was going to tell him since I didn't have sleep apnea that I really wanted to work on my concerns rather than go back for part 2 of the study.  Well like I said I was overwhelmed but I held it together.  I respect Dr. Raju and have heard many people praise him, his knowledge, his work ethic and his degree at Harvard and my 1st visit was quite good.

So when he comes in he says are you ready to go over the sleep study results?
I said yes but I have some concerns I want to talk to you about also.  He said ok fine.
Do you mind of we go over the results first and I said no, so he proceeds.

During the sleep study I was in bed 7 hours and slept 5.7 hours.  I only got 6% REM sleep (deep).  He said I did indeed stop breathing (Apnea) once and I had 154 Hypopnea's (extremely shallow breathing) and I had 156 RERAs (arousals from sleep).

I had a total of 311 respiratory events.  My baseline oxygen was 94% (Should not be below 92%) went down to a severe low value of 55% during REM sleep.  This in turn caused Cardiac problems.  During sleep my heart should beat 50-90 beats per minute.  BUT Mine was beating 45-118 per minute.  When my breathing was shallow those 311 times my heart would race to try to compensate...Severe desaturations were observed during the only REM period I had which was just before lights on.

The EKG showed arrhythmias throughout.
Isolated sleep talking was observed.
I kicked 308 times...

He said if my breathing were any worse I would need oxygen on hand always.  That my breathing was close to being COPD.  He used words like life and death and survive and die...
He said it was severe.  He said when he read my report he was going to just go ahead and put me on a machine but when they called me I told them I wanted to come in and talk about it and so now I have another sleep study with a mask Tuesday night to see how I do with forced oxygen....He said its not about which mask how big how little its about getting one on me asap....

He said as sleep deprived as I am it isn't any wonder my memory is bad and I have no energy, that I have head aches and he said he was surprised I even drove there without falling asleep.

I told him I had no idea.  In fact if you had ask me how I am sleeping I would say I was sleeping good....just the talking and headaches were bothering me.... WOW.....

I am overwhelmed but not for the same reasons I was when I went in....

I never said my speech...