Continuous Positive Snoring

Continuous Positive Snoring

The Snore Looser

By Charles  Kraus

  

My father enjoyed snoring.   At least that is what he told us.  This may have been less than the entire truth.  I recall the statement, but I also remember that when we spent a night in a motel or a week in a resort, he made sure we were given a room at the end of the corridor, “so my snoring won’t bother people”

He had reason for concern, as his night orations were not only powerfully issued, they were also spectacularly inharmonious.  His repartee was vast, and went far beyond what might be considered the sounds associated with orthodox delivery  --  the ‘sawing the log’ standards used on situation comedy shows.   Those folks were amateurs compared to my father who was capable of filling the night with a symphony of rattling, rasping, humming, squealing, and even chirping noises dispensed in dramatic counterpoint.

I grew up on the other side of the wall, the bedroom wall, and the sounds of my dad bellowing forth were reassuring.  If I awoke in the middle of the night and all was quiet, I was concerned.  Quiet was an abnormality.  It frightened me.  It was foreboding, and I remained awake until once again lulled back to sleep by the next round of raspy chanting.

My children, and their mother, have not taken to my snoring the way I took to dad’s.  Over the years, I’ve been poked to consciousness, asked to roll over (as if a change in positions would start me on a better tune), roused entirely, and once or twice, recorded so that, just in case I did not actually believe the reports, I could be confronted with digital evidence. 

Finally, after years of putting up with complaints and nasty comments, I begrudgingly agreed to consult a Sleep Specialist.  Sleep Apnea, my wife insisted, might cause, or more likely had caused, permanent brain damage.  If I got diagnosed with that, I’d have an excuse for my unusual spelling and for my inability to distinguish pastels.  The corrective for those cursed with SA is a CPAP – Continuous Positive Airway Pressure device, a pump that sends air and moisture through a long hose to a snorkel-like mask affixed to your face by head, neck and chin straps.  Tethered to the mechanism you sleep peacefully dreaming about elephants, Jules Verne and being hung for a crime you probably didn’t commit. This contraption is counterintuitive to getting a decent night’s sleep, if you ask me.  I could foresee myself becoming tangled in the tubing, and as you may be aware, strangulation often creates even grosser sounds than extravagant snoring.

But, OK, OK already, I’ll take the stupid test!

            Not something performed in a doctor’s office, the Sleep Apnea Gold Standard assessment, a polysomnography study, involves an overnight at the Sleep Clinic.  Bring your own PJs and a good book.  More reluctant than ever, and somewhat resentful, I showed up at 7:30 p.m.   I was assigned an agreeable room, clean, neat, and similar to a Motel-Six built back when the “Six” stood for $6.00, the original price for a cubical.  The Sleep Apnea stay, including all tests, plus cable television, costs about $3,000.00.  Motel-Three-Thousand.

After I changed into my night clothes, the very efficient technician began shaving selected body hair from various parts of me.  He glued minute microphones and sensors to my legs, chest, neck, head, face, to any place his eyes seemed to land.  Wires attached to these sites were run up and down my pajamas, then off to a small transponder suspended around my neck. Later, from the distant vantage point of his observation booth, an adjoining room, the technician would be able to tell every time I blinked, every time I breathed (or didn’t breath – failure to breath is either a sign of SA, or that you’ve expired).  If you wiggle a toe, he knows about it.  If you fall out of bed, he’s your witness.  You wouldn’t dare pick your nose.  Probably, if you had lewd thoughts, he’d tell your mother.

There is an expression – “I’m wired.”  The conventional use of this term does not apply to victims of SA studies.  When they say they are wired, they mean, THEY ARE WIRED.   When the time came for the technician to tuck me in, he removed the transponder necklace and affixes it to a hook on the headboard.  Wires from various parts of my body now formed a slightly taut canopy, sort of a cross between snarled spaghetti al dente and a web spun by an inexperienced spider.

It’s lights out, time for a good night’s sleep.  That is, if you don’t mind sleeping while impersonating a marionette, and while someone is watching your every twist and turn.  Listening, too.  Unlike the hospital setting where you have to repeatedly press a button to get an aide’s attention, all you have to do now is shift your elbow and a voice comes over the loudspeaker, “ you ok, Mr. Kraus?”  If Orwell only knew.

Snoring is but one of my medical aberrations.  I have a prostate situation that causes me to visit the bathroom several times during the course of the evening.  This becomes particularly challenging if I happened to be wired to a transponder that is affixed to the bedpost.

“Excuse me,” I say to the dark room.

“Can I help you, Mr. Kraus?” comes the amplified response.

I suppose having to share my bathroom needs with a stranger is no big deal, but it certainly felt awkward, especially when I knew someone was ‘out there’ in the obscure beyond, waiting for me to finish up.  That as soon as he heard what he believed to be the last drop hitting the bowl, long before I flushed, or was even sure I’d completed my assignment, I would hear the voice:

“Ready, Mr. Kraus?”

One of the pages I’d filled out when I arrived for the study was a pledge.  I promised that in the morning, I would not pester the technician by trying to get him to reveal the results of my test.  He’d counted my twitches, noted my limb movements, the gaps between inhalations.  He’d calculated my statistics on his snore-o-meter, arriving at my sleep efficiency score.  He knew what was going on.  I could tell by the gleam in his eyes. 

But, I have to wait until my consultation with the Sleep Doctor next Monday.  Do I or don’t I have SA?

My guess is the testing will have proved inconclusive.  That is because of the IE complication.  I just made up the IE complication, and though no scientific experiments have confirmed my hypothesis, it sure sounds like a reasonable theory.   The basic principle is that in order to test a person’s sleep behavior, you have to let him get some sleep.  And that if someone is out there lurking in the mist observing your every physical adjustment, you might just spend the evening in a state of hyper consciousness.    I did.  It seemed very similar to the way I felt when I was on watch in the military.  

“Halt, who goes there?”

“Is everything OK, Mr. Kraus?”

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Charles' new book, The Teen Magician .. That's You! is on the Kirkus Review Recommended list.
theteenmagicianthatsyou.com