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Thankfully, I've never had a problem sleeping. On most nights, I figure it takes me five to ten minutes from the time my head hits the pillow until I'm in snoozeland. And once I'm out, I generally sleep like the dead all night.

Or so I thought.

I've always snored--loudly. My father was a tremendous snorer in his day, so I'm not surprised that I inherited this trait from him. I never really gave it much thought, actually. I just figured that snoring was something that some people did, and there was no harm in it.

The wife has always tolerated my snoring, but one day she told me that something had changed in my sleep routine--that I actually seemed to stop breathing from time to time, and then suddenly resume snoring with a great snarling gasp. This would happen several times a night, she would tell me. But as far as I could tell, the quality of my sleep remained unchanged.

I had heard of sleep apnea before, but really didn't know much about it. My wife was concerned enough that she got me to see a neurologist specializing in sleep disorders. I had an exam and then spent a night in a "sleep lab" so my sleep routine could be monitored and recorded. During this time I was wired up with electrodes all over my head, face, chest, nose and hands. A technician in another room monitored me on closed circuit TV, and recorded my respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, and brain wave activity. I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to fall asleep with all these electrodes pasted all over, but, true to form, I was out like a light in only a few minutes.

The results were, to say the least, startling. Over the course of seven hours of what to me seemed like perfectly normal, deep sleep, I stopped breathing for more than 10 seconds over 220 times. Roughly every two minutes or so I would unconsciously hold my breath, until my brain snapped to and said breathe, stupid! But during these apneas, my blood pressure and heart rate would spike, until I started to breathe again, and they would settle down

The neurologist was concerned, most especially because of the strain all of this was putting on my heart. So per his recommendation, I now use this fancy CPAP (continuous ~~perfusion~~ positive air pressure) machine that forces a steady stream of air up my nose and down through my airway while I sleep. The air travels from the machine through a flexible plastic tube and into a nosepiece that kind or makes me look like a SCUBA diver when I’m wearing it. One trick I had to learn was to keep my mouth shut and breathe in and out through my nose only, but this was surprisingly easy to master. The air pressure forces open the soft tissue in the throat, so that I can’t snore and I’m always receiving air.

I have to be honest: I never knew what a good night’s sleep was until I started using this CPAP contraption. Once I put that headgear and nosepiece on, I relax and zonk out into the deepest, most restful sleep ever. My wife tells me that I sleep so soundly that I hardly move at all (in fact she says I’m so still that it looks like I’m on life support.)

We spend so much of our lives asleep. I just never appreciated how important a good quality sleep is.