WHEN IT COMES TO SLEEP APNEA and other sleep disorders, I am a snore-house of knowledge.
What was a gentle fluttering noise emanating musically from my olfactory organs when I was in my prime, over the years became the melodic phrase that the calypsonian Atilla the Hun used to describe the arrival of the Graf Zeppelin in Trinidad in 1934 – “a rumbling and a tumbling in the atmosphere”.
I started to feel extremely sorry for my wife and children and sorrier for myself. I woke up sometimes startled hearing myself snore and wondering how come the weather forecasters had not warned us about a thunderstorm.
There are times I could feel but not smell my wife’s fear as she shook me awake thinking that I had stopped breathing permanently.
At first I thought it was natural to snore after a hard day’s work and it was not worth losing sleep over.
Once, long ago at university in Canada, I was a teaching assistant in a communication course and we had a retreat before the start of the term at a posh resort in the lakes area of Kingston, Ontario.
Brian, one of the lecturers, quipped: “Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone.”
I was lucky nobody had told that to Indranie, so she stuck with me despite my snoring reaching levels that are supposedly enough to shatter eardrums and leave listeners deaf. One of my friends said that because of his constant snoring his wife gets up and goes to sleep in their son’s bed – even though the son is 28 and lives four miles away.
When men are among other men and one is a snorer, there is a way of getting some temporary respite. Some cricketers were forced to bunk two to a room and nobody wanted to room with one of them, let’s call him D, because he snored so loudly. They decided it wasn’t fair to make one of them stay with him the whole time, so the manager agreed to let them take turns.
The first cricketer slept with D and at breakfast time the next morning his hair was a mess and his eyes were all bloodshot. They said, “Man, what happened to you?” He said, “D snored so loudly, I just sat up and watched him all night.”
The next night it was a different player’s turn. In the morning, same thing – hair all standing up, eyes all bloodshot. They said: “Man, what happened to you? You look awful!” He said: “Man, that D shakes the roof. I watched him all night.”
The third night was Frank’s turn. Frank was a big burly fast bowler. The next morning he came to breakfast smiling and bright-eyed. The others couldn’t believe it! They asked, “Man, what happened?” He said, “Well, we got ready for bed. I went and tucked D into bed and kissed him good night. He sat up and watched me all night long.”
Women have it harder. They say that the reason the Black Widow spider kills their males after mating is to stop the snoring before it starts. I decided to put an end to the torture my family undergoes and took a sleep test in Trinidad a few weeks ago. It confirmed that my snoring can wake the dead and return them to their old haunts with murderous intent, and that there were times I was not getting all the oxygen I needed. Also, I was not getting enough sleep and woke up tired.
To make life better for all concerned (and longer for me or so they say), I bought a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, which increases the air pressure in your throat so that your airway does not collapse when you breathe in.
The problem is that you have to wear a mask – some cover your entire face and some cover your nose. I got one that covers my nose only and despite being offered some sleeping tablets to help me adjust to the mask the first few days, I refused and decided I could handle it.
After some fitful sleep trying to keep the air from getting into my eyes and squashing the tubing, I fell asleep smiling at the thought of calling my wife and telling her that while I was in bed I had got tangled up with a bunch of hose and was breathing heavily from the pressure.
I don’t know what woke me up but I ended up facing the mirror on the clothes closet and in the dim light I saw this google-eyed masked creature. Feeling that I was being strangled I let out a long scream, which never materialized and my breath going out and the air coming in made me cough and gasp.
Then, trying to run while tangled in the bed-sheet almost caused me to strangle myself with the hose and the electric cord.
I could hear the coroner: “This man was always a combination of contradictions. He respired and expired at the same time.”
• Tony Deyal was last seen talking about the security guard who went to the doctor for help with his snoring. He complained, “Doc, you know how many jobs I lost because of it?”