BEFORE YOU READ - If you don't want to read a rant, or are just going to post "cry more" then scoot along.
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My fiancee is a nurse. I know, I blab about it on here all the time.
Well, she says I have sleep apnea.
I was sleeping on a buddy's couch after I was in his town drinking too much one night, when I woke up after I sobered up, he says "Dude, you have sleep apnea and you're choking when you sleep, go see a doctor".
So what do I do? Of course I schedule an appointment with a pulmonologist. Not just ANY pulmonologist, but the one that cared for my $440,000 in medical bills when I almost died about a year and a half ago from pneumonia. He ordered a sleep test at the same hospital where I had that hefty bill, where I got to a hospital and spend the night with a million wires hook up to me and to monitor me. After the test, I go back to the pulmonologist, and he says I have moderate to severe sleep apnea. I wake up on average 25 times per hour he said.
So I had to go back in for another sleep study test (these are $2500 a piece, $250 after insurance), this time wearing a mask. So I got in last night, they hook up all the wires, then put the mask on. At first I feel like I'm in Top Gun or something, no big deal, nothing like when I had a trach in when I was in the ICU for 2 months, but I could never get to sleep the damn thing was so uncomfortable. I might've gotten 1 hour of sleep. Tops. So 3:30AM rolls around, and I had enough. I hit the call button, told him to pull the wires of of me, and I got the hell out of there.
Not wanting to wake up the fiancee at home, I just slept in the car at work until 7AM this morning. I call our company's insurance nursing company (who are stellar, god bless them) and they say there's tons of different types of masks, some that just are inserted into the nostrils that are MUCH more comfortable. She asks me if he offered this to me. I said no. So I make some calls:
Call #1: Company nurse who gave the good advice above
Call #2: Patient relations at the Hospital, basically bitched them out without raising my voice. I know a director at this hospital but didn't mention his name.
Call #3: To my pulmonologist who doesn't open for another hour. I refuse to have another one of these expensive tests, just order me the damn machine. I also refuse to wait another month to see him before I can get a machine that may potentially save my life. And not the Top Gun mask please. You can't even tilt 1 degree without air blowing right into your f-ing eye.
Sleep apnea can lead to congestive heart failure, stroke, IMPOTENCE, daytime fatigue, grabbyness (see this post)... and lots of other crazy stuff.
So there goes $500 down the toilet to our greedy healthcare system. Not to turn this into a P&N thread, but I did not vote for Obama. I severely regret this. Our country's healthcare system, while it saved my life, needs a complete overhaul. People are obviously dependent on healthcare and there are way too many money hungry people running it and it's ruining our society.
End rant.