THE MAN BEHIND THE MASK

Masked heroes have always been considered cool; from The Lone Ranger and Tonto to Batman and Robin. But the one mask that no one wants to wear is the CPAP’s. I was first diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea four years ago following a sleep study. At the time it was considered mild, and I felt like an adjustment in medication I was taking at the time took care of some of my symptoms. Plus, I just didn’t feel like the machine was doing much for me. So, I stopped wearing it.

What is OSA? The Mayo Clinic describes it in this way: “Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the muscles in the back of your throat relax…When the muscles relax, your airway narrows or closes as you breathe in, and you can't get an adequate breath in…Your brain senses this inability to breathe and briefly rouses you from sleep so you can reopen your airway.” [http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sleep-apnea/basics/causes/con-20020286]

Looking back, it was so obvious. Even though I was single, at one time I lived with four other guys. My friends would often comment about just how much I slept. I thought it was normal, and even if it was a bit on the excessive side, a little extra sleep never hurt anybody, right?

Fast forward a few years…I’m now in my early 30’s, married with a 2-year-old, and another daughter on the way. The signs and symptoms have become more than simply frustrating and annoying, they are seriously beginning to affect my presence at home and performance at work. The window-shaking snoring aside, my wife realized that I would stop breathing for seconds at a time. I was waking up extremely tired after having hours of what I believed to be restful sleep—and the headaches were strong enough to kill a small dog. My wife would swear up and down that she had told me something, and I would genuinely have no memory. Irritable is a nice way to say that I was easily angered, often times without any obvious catalyst.

What was sad, even more pathetic, was the fact that I would beg my toddler daughter to take naps that she didn’t need just because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. She was wide-eyed and just wanted to play. My wife worked during the day, and I at night. So, it was just she and me during the early part of the day.

Even worse than subjecting her to unnecessary naps, I knew that I was wasting the precious time we had to spend together, just she and I. She wanted Daddy, and Daddy wanted sleep. It was like a drug that was never enough. That was on the good days. One time when she was about a year old I fell asleep while trying to get her to as well. I woke up to a shelf crashing down on her and beside my head. Thankfully, she wasn’t seriously hurt. That changed how I handled my sleep struggles when she was in my care. I had to make sure we were in a really secure room or just plain stay awake.

At work, I did my best to excuse what was happening. The fact that I yawned incessantly during breaks in the newscasts was chalked up to boredom and my short attention span. What was even more embarrassing to hide was the short-term memory problems. I would be given a direction just minutes before and completely forget, failing to do what we had just discussed. That may not seem like a big deal, except the majority of time it was on live TV. For instance, the producer or director might tell me to read a story before going to weather. Instead, I would toss to the meteorologist like we had originally planned. It was frustrating for my co-workers and made me look like an idiot. Most of the time they just assumed I hadn’t been listening.

Several weeks ago I was ready to give up. Give up what, I do not know. I just knew that I couldn’t continue living life as an incredibly sleep-deprived, unnecessarily irritable individual. When I was single, it mostly affected me. Now, my family was paying the price for what amounted to my vanity. I wasn’t a big fan of being a “hose nose”. I also came to understand that perhaps I hadn’t been properly fitted with my mask.

This week I completed a new sleep study which reaffirmed the first: I have sleep apnea. This time it appears to have progressed. The condition is often hereditary, and although it most often affects people who are overweight, older, and have thicker necks, somehow I still fit the bill. Although my grandfather suffered from sleep apnea, I never thought it would be me. He was the classic case; I was not. I still remember him nodding off in the middle of the living room in his chair with the lights on while everyone was engaged in conversation.

I’ve had my moments, too. Several years ago I realized that I could no longer drive more than an hour alone without needing to pull over, possibly to sleep. There were several scary moments where I “woke-up” while driving. There was a point where I would fall asleep at my desk if I remained inactive for any period of time. I’ve beaten myself up for years because what I had written off as laziness on my part was actually a genuine lack of energy because of a condition I couldn’t control. I would have to sleep in and even then, it would take sheer will-power to shower, get dressed, and accomplish anything other than my bill-paying job. Weekends have been a bust for years, and free-time was often spent as nap-time.  

This condition has stolen a lot of good sleep from me, likely for more than a decade. Far worse is the fact that sleep apnea has held my quality of life hostage. At 33, I’m ready to live with energy. I want my wife to experience an engaged, enthusiastic husband who loves her and is excited about life. I want my daughters to have a dad who wants to play all day and would rather be active with them than in bed.

Sleep is necessary, but I no longer want the lack of it to rule my life. Maybe my story sounds familiar to you because you know someone with the same symptoms. Maybe it is you. Whatever you do, take care of it now. Untreated, the American Sleep Apnea Association warns that OSA can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, automobile accidents caused by falling asleep at the wheel, diabetes, and depression.

I have a renewed hope that this diagnosis and the use of a continuous positive airway pressure machine will redeem what has been taken from me: sleep. Basically, a hose attached to the mask blows the room’s air into your throat, forcing the airway to remain open. Using CPAP isn’t fun, and it certainly isn’t sexy; but it is necessary and potentially life-saving.     

So who is the man behind the mask? I am a husband, a father, a son, a brother. I am a television news anchor whose job it is to tell the stories that impact your life. That is why I’m telling mine.

Read and learn more about obstructive sleep apnea here:

The American Sleep Apnea Association

The Mayo Clinic

Take the tests here

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