My Life and Sleep Apnea

I used to sleep on my stomach before I had my back problems back in the 80’s. I know that I slept better; at least that's how I remembered it. Then I flattened a disc in my lower back and I found that the only way I could sleep was on my back. It was strange at first because my neck was strained in the morning. I guess it was because my neck was used to laying a certain way at night. Of course this wasn't very good for my sleep apnea. A few years later I was diagnosed with acid reflux. I have written a post on acid reflux earlier. Having this condition really affected the way I slept. I used to have just one pillow under my head but with the acid reflux my head and neck had to be elevated to keep the acid coming up into my throat. Even with the pillows and medication for the acid reflux it is still a problem. Of course with sleep apnea the best way to sleep with sleep apnea is to tilt your head back and your chin should be pointing upward. This presents a problem because w...

I used to work overnight on a job from 11 to 7 in the morning. I found it very difficult to sleep during the day. I put sheets over the curtains to block as much light as possible into the room but that didn’t help. I put ear plugs in to make it as quiet as possible but it didn’t help (especially since I was living in an apartment at the time). Even before the sleep apnea I had always been a light sleeper. I don’t think at the time that my sleep apnea was as bad as it is now. I weighted about 40 pounds less for one thing and I used to sleep on my stomach for another. By the time evening rolled around I was dead tired and worked through my shift like a zombie. The strange part about it was that when I went home in the morning, even as tired as I was I still had a hard time getting to sleep. At the time I hadn’t heard about shift work sleep disorder. Apparently I wasn’t the only person that had a hard time switching between work shifts, going from day shifts to night shifts. Ap...