I have been diagnosed with a sleep apnea. For those of you who don't know what that is, Sleep Apnea is a disorder that interrupts normal sleep patterns with intermittent pauses in breathing. I was always tired. I could fall asleep at a dime and when I woke, I was still tired. It was an awful way to live. Did I know I had a sleep apnea? No, I never even knew something like that existed. My former doctor told me to quit smoking, exercise more and I would feel better. So I did. I was still tired. Did you ever try exercising when you were so tired that it was hard to keep awake? It doesn't work. I suffered for years. When I remarried, my husband would wake me because I was snoring and keeping him awake. Sometimes I snored so loud, I woke myself up. My cat would wake me up by patting my face...because I was snoring? Who knows, but between everyone waking me up I was not getting a good nights sleep.

A new doctor sent me for a sleep study. There I learned I had a mild sleep apnea and to solve this problem a cpap machine was recommended. Now a cpap machine is a device that looks like something from outer space. The mask is attached to your face covering your nose and mouth and hooked to a machine that blows air up your nose. If the seal around your face breaks you hear this rushing sound of wind sounding like the cave of the winds at Niagara Falls. The only way for this to work for me is if I slept perfectly still on my back. Not going to happen. I thought my only choice was to suffer and keep apologizing to my husband and cat.

But not so. There is an oral appliance that seems to be working for me. The purpose of this oral appliance is to reposition the lower jaw, tongue, soft palate, and hyoid bone into a certain position, to keep the airway open with stabilization of the tongue and jaw, or to provide artificial muscle tone to prevent collapse and resulting airway blockage. I am not going to go into detail about this device, but if you want to know more please visit their website at www.ihatecpap.com. All I know is since I stated sleeping with this device, I have stopped snoring and I’m starting to feel better. I’m not tired during the day and can actually stay up past 9:00 p.m. I highly recommend it. I’m happy, my husband is now getting sleep, so he’s happy. But my cat? She’s still patting me on the face. Maybe she wants to play?