When your bedfellow is a machine...

Due to popular request (well, one request – thanks Bryher!), I have decided to write a blog entry about my life using a CPAP machine. I have written an entry about Obstructive Sleep Apnoea before and you might like to read that first.

My CPAP machine is a Resmed Auto Spirit II (sounds like a robot!) and I have been using it every night for eight months. I have a full face mask because I breathe through my mouth. I have to wear it every night because if I don’t, I am at major risk of heart attack and stroke. I think I have always had Sleep Apnoea but it has definitely been made worse by my increasing weight (especially around my neck).

Every night, about half and hour before I go to bed, I wash the mask in hot water and Fairy Liquid (the approved way to clean off facial oils and gunk!) and leave it to dry. When I’ve finished reading my favourite book in bed, I slip on the mask and turn it on. At first, a fine mist of air blows into the mask, allowing you to fall asleep. Mine does this for 10 minutes before switching to a higher notch on the Richter scale. The strength of the air pumping in increases, but senses when I try and stop breathing. If this happens, the air immediately increases to a full blown hurricane and forces my airways open, keeping me breathing!

The cons

• It took me about 5-6 months to get used to wearing a mask to bed. It’s comfortable now but I had many tearful and sleep deprived nights at first.
• I have to remember to clean it before bed.
• It leaves red marks across the bridge of my nose and two little circles on my forehead which doesn’t disappear before I get to work.
• I have to take it everywhere with me (if I’m going to sleep)
• I would have to have long haul flights in Business Class so that I had an electrical socket, therefore costing me a fortune.
• I am yet to introduce Nigel the CPAP to a ‘visiting friend of the male persuasion’. Imagine “was that good for you dear?” I turn to say my line wearing a Darth Vadar mask – he runs naked out of the window! Seriously though, it does raise questions about how and when and what!
• If said ‘male’ should brave a night with the mask woman, I couldn’t face him in bed because the mask blows the cold excess air out of holes at the top.
• They only really make masks for morbidly obese men, so as I’m getting smaller, my mask is getting too big and I have the smallest one available.
• I desperately wanted to travel and volunteer in India this summer and teaching with the VSO in Africa is a life-long dream I’ve had. Due to the electricity not being stable in either of these countries, I can not go. This has been the cause of many, many tears and ultimately, it’s what made me walk through the doors of Weight Watchers with a goal of getting rid of the CPAP.

The Pros

• I don’t spend my life walking around in a hangover-like daze anymore
• I can do my job properly
• I have a social life, that doesn’t involve falling asleep on someone’s sofa at 7pm
• I have free weekends – before, I would sleep pretty much solid from Fri night to Sunday afternoon
• I can drink alcohol again!
• I feel my age again
• It is making weight loss easier because good sleep = good metabolism!
• It is saving my life!

So, Nigel the CPAP is a socially unacceptable pain the arse but ultimately, it is saving my life. It gives me the energy to be normal again. Years of depression and dangerous napping have all gone and in its place is a new, younger, happier, healthier, livelier me – and I quite like her!