Sleep Apnea Study: The Inside Scoop

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to spend the night at “The SleepLab Hotel”, a fine four-star establishment on the water in the Everett Marina Village. Actually, it was a hotel at one time but it’s long since been transformed into a place called The North Puget Sound Center for Sleep Disorders.

The SleepLab Hotel at The Everett Marina
I had no plans to blog about this, but as I told people what I was doing, many of them said that they had symptoms of sleep apnea or had been told by their wives or husbands that they do.

And that’s how I ended up there. Over the last couple of years, BowlingWidow has told me that at times I’ve stopped breathing for 15-30 second intervals during the night. I also snore but, hey, who doesn’t? The breathing thing became enough of a wakeup call though, even for someone like me who would rather bowl ten 140 games in a row than go visit a doctor.

Sleep apnea is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure, arrhythmias, and diabetes. It’s not gonna get you that one time but the cumulative effect can sneak up on you and make things miserable during those so called golden years (that seem to be approaching faster than I care to admit).

The bed: did I get the death penalty?
My night started at 7:00pm when I checked into the place. At around 7:30 I met with the technician who described the process. I changed into some pajamas and gave a test run to a CPAP machine. This is a sealed mask connected to a machine that delivers a constant air pressure through the nostrils. It’s designed to keep air passages open throughout the night and is 100% effective in eliminating snoring and sleep apnea. The downside is that it takes some getting used to and will immediately remind you of Darth Vader (although the mask is not nearly as intrusive as Darth’s) or more accurately the character played by Dennis Hopper in the film “Blue Velvet”. Other options to the CPAP include surgery, however it’s widely considered by the medical types to be less than 50% effective.

The CPAP was for demonstration only and was not to be a part of the diagnostic study. At around eight, they began attaching wires to me. Not just a few. There were somewhere around 15 of them. Several were on my head in various locations. These were designed to track localized brain activity during the various stages of sleep up to and including REM sleep (which does not imply that I was dozing and listening to the music of Michael Stipe and Peter Buck).

BowlingJoe as Lab Rat: Doctor, please don't administer the shock
There were wires to track breathing and my heart activity. They even had them attached to my jaw and calves to measure teeth grinding and restless leg syndrome, respectively.

Fully wired up and with a plastic device in my nose to monitor air pressure in and out, I was targeting a “bedtime” of around 9:45. I started reading the book I brought with me hoping it would help facilitate the process. It helped a bit but not much.

Actually focusing on going to sleep when “I had to” was challenging, particularly when combined with dodging wire bundles and making sure the tape holds (in most instances they used a type of glue to bond, but on the face proper it was tape).

I think that it took me around an hour to sleep and I remember waking up several times, including once to get permission to go to the bathroom. Yes, the technician has to come in and disconnect the wire pack so you can go do your business. But getting that to happen is easy, as there is a live intercom system as well as a camera on the ceiling above the bed. They don’t miss much.

At 6:15am the next day, they came in and woke me up; telling me that the data collection they had planned for was a success. I have no idea how that happened because it felt like I got a less than optimal night of sleep. But I’ll trust them. The data has been sent to the sleep disorder specialist for interpretation and recommendation but I have yet to meet with him as I write this.

A typical CPAP mask


My guess is that I’ll be invited for a return visit to The Hotel, find a CPAP mask that’s comfortable (inasmuch as those things are comfortable) and do the test over again only with the mask.

If you’re in a position to do so and have concerns about sleep apnea, I’d encourage you look into it. It doesn’t hurt and only costs you one, maybe two nights in terms of the time investment. Getting used to the mask, however, could be something else entirely.

May the force be with you.