There are few things more important to your overall wellbeing than getting a good night’s sleep. And nothing brings that into sharper focus than having trouble getting a restful kip.
It’s something I’ve had problems with all my adult life and after years of struggling I finally decided enough was enough and asked my GP to refer me to my local health board’s sleep team. It took five years to get an appointment (the small matter of a global pandemic may have played a part in that) but I finally got to see a specialist late last year.
My lovely partner had told me I sometimes stop breathing when I’m asleep, and the health board’s sleep team told me I’d stopped breathing no fewer than 22 times the night I was monitored, a condition known as sleep apnoea.
That sounds like a lot — and obviously it’s not ideal — but apparently that’s actually considered fairly mid-range when it comes to sleep apnoea. I’d heard about CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines, but to the best of my knowledge I’d never actually seen one.
It was a bit of a surprise then to be presented with a surprisingly modern-looking piece of kit – a sleek black box roughly the size of a breadbin, with a long hose attached to a silicon mask. The machine works by keeping your airways open by feeding pressurised air through the mask.
On putting the mask on for the first time, my first thought was that I looked a bit like Bane from Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. Sadly I don’t look like Tom Hardy when I take it off.
There are quite a few settings on the machine to adjust, but ultimately it’s really as simple as pressing a button to turn it on and off again when you wake up. I’m supposed to use it whenever I sleep, including if it’s just a little afternoon nap — and it’s surprising how quickly I got used to it.
I expected I’d struggle to sleep with a mask strapped tightly to my face, but really I barely notice it. The only really jarring thing is if I wake up while it’s on full blast and blowing a jet of pressurised air into my lungs — but there’s a button on the machine to get it to release the pressure for just such a situation.
It’s also nowhere near as loud as I expected. I’d anticipated something in the region of a jet engine next to my bed, but it’s really not even as loud as a desk fan. That is, unless you take the mask off or the hose out while it’s turned on, upon which it makes an alarmingly vicious sucking noise. Lesson learned.
But there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s not the most elegant piece of machinery in the world. With a mask strapped to my face with a long hose trailing from it, I can’t help but be reminded of that bit in Alien when a face-hugger creature attaches itself to John Hurt. Thankfully my long-suffering partner claims not to mind.
But six months on, do I feel any different? To be honest: not really.
I still wake up feeling barely rested — but the number of times I stop breathing in an average night is down from more than 20 to only two or three, which can only be a good thing. I’m told I’ll have a follow-up appointment in two years, so perhaps I’ll feel differently then.