A few weeks ago I was diagnosed as having sleep apnea. I was experiencing excessive daytime sleepiness, to the point I couldn't stay awake while driving no matter how hard I tried. As of now I am off of work on a medical leave awaiting my CPAP. Does anyone else suffer from this and have you had success with other alternatives to the machine?

I was also just diagnosed with sleep apnea and can't sleep with the mask. I'm going to back to the doctor that referred me to the clinic in about a month to see what other options I have.

I have heard that some people can sleep in reclining chairs and it helps them but I haven't tried that.

A bunch (like 5 of the 12) of people I work with, or their spouses have Sleep Apnea. The ones that do have it say the masks work wonders.

There are more than one type of mask out there. What kind did you try?

My brother has sleep apnea (and snored like a freight train - he literally woke a friend three hotel rooms down). His life changed dramatically when he got on CPAP a few years ago. It took him a little while to get used to it, but it works wonders.

I have two other friends who sleep with some sort of mask (not sure which variant), also with good results. One travels a lot, and never goes anywhere without it.

-jk

Thank you for the warning. I have heard it can be life threatening and now I know it can be. It had become dangerous for me because I was falling asleep driving many times everyday and had many near misses. The doctor at the sleep center who is treating me now told me that I was a danger on the road and not to drive so I took a medical leave until I am feeling better. I've known for a while that something was wrong with me but it took a long time to finally find out what it was. I get my CPAP machine tomorrow and hope that life will start getting better in many ways. My family doctor had tried me on the drug Provigil to keep me awake and for 3 days it worked and it was the difference between night and day how I felt. I hope I feel that way from the CPAP.

I know nothing about sleep apnea myself, but I do remember that a couple of months ago, it was all over the news here that the university of Antwerp (Belgium) had developed a revolutionary treatment. It seems with a relatively simple (you only need to remain one night in the hospital, and the procedure is done with a local anaesthetic) surgical procedure, they can prevent the tongue from 'dropping' into the airway while sleeping and effectively blocking the air transfer.

Read the press release here. I was released on August 21st 2007, so it's rather recent. Here you can see an animation of the procedure.

Once the procedure is completed, no more sleeping with a CPAP mask is necessary. Life returns to normal, so to speak.

Hope this helps.

That's a frightening video.
Pretty neat, though.

Maybe some day that will be available in the states. Until then, I got my mask today and will give it a try.

Does this have anything to do with your jimmy legs?

In a round about way. I knew something wasn't right back then and thought it had to do with Restless Legs Syndrome. After the sleep study they said that wasn't what was causing me to awaken all night long. I do have them but it is mild and they seem to only bother me during the day. I gave up taking the medicine that the doctor had given me for it because I would feel drowsy the next day. Turns out that any medication to help you sleep is a very bad thing for people with sleep apnea sine it makes it worse.

I did, was told it could cause brain damage and all sorts of nasty stuff.

Solution - after all the other advice - was 3m MicroPore medical tape. A short piece about 3cm long across your lips at night before you go to bed fixed it for me by training me to breath only through my nose at night.

YMMV. Worked for me. It's Aponea.

Except the œ ligature in those words has no actual basis in etymology, as they are native Latin words, not Latin words borrowed from Greek, which is the only place in Latin where the œ ligature is used. On the other hand, by that rule, it ought to be "œconomy".

reference