Can’t Sleep While Sharing A Bed?

by John Meils

Then came the matter of my potential diagnosis. The most likely was obstructive sleep apnea, a disorder where you intermittently stop breathing during the night. Recently, it has been linked to a host of disturbing problems from depression and diabetes to heart disease and stroke. The popular solution, a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, is a Vader-like contraption that involves wearing a mask over your nose and/or mouth while you sleep.

My friend Peter said this of his newly prescribed CPAP machine: “If I was single, I’d be hiding that shit in the closet.” But, he added: “When I wake up in the morning now, I’m not ‘hung over’ from lack of sleep.”

Another friend, Chris, who had severe sleep apnea, tried the UPPP (uvulopalatopharyngoplasty) surgery, which involves removing soft tissue from the back of the throat, including all or part of the uvula, tonsils, and adenoids. “It just didn’t seem worth it,” he concluded, after his snoring and apnea returned six months later.

Paul, the younger brother of a college friend, also had the UPPP surgery, and it changed his life. He stopped snoring, no longer relied on caffeine to function, lost a significant amount of weight, and would “do it again in a heartbeat.”

I arranged to take a sleep test. I didn’t fancy the idea of connecting myself to a machine every night and the surgery seemed extreme, but I loved Zoe and it felt like our relationship was at stake. A few weeks later, I was sitting in a chair at a local hospital in my boxers and t-shirt while a stranger attached 28 electrodes to my head and legs. After seven fitful hours—a gauntlet more grueling than any single night with Zoe—I was awoken and told to go home.