Sleep Apnea is essentially when you stop breathing in your sleep. Heres what happens if you have sleep apnea. YOU DIE! ok, maybe not instantly, but it can lead to a whole lotta nastiness if left untreated. When you fall asleep, your muscles relax. This includes the muscles in the back of your throat and surrounding areas. If you have sleep apnea, when these muscles and tissue relax, they collapse, cutting off your airway. This makes your oxygen level drop, which prompts your brain to say "Hey, wake up and breathe!". You take another breath or two, your body relaxes again, and your throat closes off. When your oxygen level drops, your heart rate increases. When your level goes back to normal, it decreases. Its been compared to running a marathon in your sleep (but you dont get the physical benefits of running the marathon). Most people havent the foggiest idea that they have sleep apnea, they just know that they are tired all of the time. Many patients come in and say "Well, my spouse says I snore really loud and that I stop breathing, but I think I'm fine". We hook them up, and no, they arent fine, they are half a beat away from death. I've honestly had some nights where I stare at a patient and wonder how in the world they are still on this earth. Sleep apnea leads to high blood pressure, obesity, impaired cognitive skills, chronic fatigue, and on and on.
How do we treat it? Well, theres this crazy little invention called CPAP. Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. CPAP is this little machine that sits beside the bed. We hook a hose to the machine, with the other end going to a face mask that we fit you for. When we turn it on, it filters room air through the machine, to the hose, to the mask. This air goes into your nose, down your throat, into your lungs. When the air reaches those muscles/tissue that have collapsed, it forces its way through, opening those muscles and holding them open. This keeps your airway open, which regulates your oxygen level, heartbeat, etc. At this point in the study, Twin and I both usually yell "BOOM! SAVED YOUR LIFE!". Everyone has a certain level of air pressure that keeps the airway open, so part of our job is to work with different levels and see which one works best for you.
How do we do it? Well, we are the awesome super twins, so we can do anything!!!!!!!! hehehe I took some pics last night, so I'll share those with you.
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Heres a pic of my cart after I've got everything laid out to hook someone up.
Lots of goo and sticky stuff goes all over your body. Its pretty awesome to rip off in the morning, especially if your crabby or rude to me!!!!!!!! So, be nice to your sleep techs or you'll be missing hair in the morning!!!
Heres our tech room. Its messy and cluttered, but we love it :) It has a tv, which is AWESOME. Twin and I always sit next to each other. If someone gets in between us, we harass them until they leave the lab crying. hehe No, maybe not, but we think about it.
And heres the main part of our job, what we stare at all night long until we are quite sure we are going blind.
All of those pretty monitors we put on you send all these pretty lines to our computers. The top two are monitoring your eyes, as your eyes will twitch when you are in REM sleep (which is why its called Rapid Eye Movement). The next 7 lines are your brain waves. Depending on the shape and size of them, we can tell when you are awake, asleep, or fighting the zombie apocalypse. The next two are your chin monitors. They also change during REM sleep. The next three are the belts that we put around your chest and abdomen. They go up and down with each breath you take. If/when they go flat, it means you arent getting the signal to breath, which is a whole other problem. The next red line is the cpap machine line. This person is on cpap, so I make sure that line stays nice and wavy. When it goes flat, I know theres an obstruction and its time to raise the pressure level. The next two are leg monitors. They check for restless leg syndrome. Fun times!!! Then you have two ekg lines, followed by your oxygen level and respiration levels. The numbers on the bottom are associated with the cpap machine, what level you are on and what the leak is for the mask. (for all you privacy law people out there, you can see I took this pic at an angle that does not show any patient information)
So, this is what we do while you are sleeping :) Its an awesome job, and Twin and I both love it.
Its either we laugh or...we laugh at our patients when they are sleeping!!!!!
Angie
