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Years Wasted, by Things Large and Small

When writing about depression, it’s easy to go into so much depth about the myriad causes and effects that the bigger picture is lost on some people.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/fvVFg1wLtBs

My last two posts about a sleep apnea diagnosis and the its probable effects on my depression over the years led one friend on Twitter to say this:

I think there might be confusion about cause and effect here. Also, depression is not just a mood you experience some times.

I bristled at that for a moment, because I’ve been pretty open about my long battles with depression and, to my recollection, have never suggested it was a little mood I sometimes find myself in. We went back and forth a bit more on Twitter and reached a consensus of sorts. He thanked me for clarifying, adding, “Too often I see people treating depression like a paper cut.”

It’s easy to feel that way when someone starts picking at the various causes of depression from around the edges. In the case of sleep apnea, the lack of proper sleep isn’t the primary trigger for my bouts of melancholy. For me, a variety of triggers feed the larger monster.

But over time I’ve found it important to stop and ponder every little piece of the puzzle. The sleep apnea is just one more discovery, and the treatment could be a new arrow in a quill that’s grown fatter over time.

Along the way, I believe I’m improving myself and making the depressive episodes smaller as I go. I’m getting a constant education and I try to apply those lessons to my daily life.

I’m not going to stop doing so, even if people occasionally suggest I’m letting small details get in the way of the bigger picture. I know the big picture all too well.

The depression I’ve experienced amounts to wasted years, long periods where I hid indoors, lying in front of the TV, eager to escape the real world. I missed out on a lot of quality living in those years.

Thanks to the right mix of medication, years of intense therapy and other lifestyle changes, I’m a different man today. I don’t fear things like I used to, and I’ve racked up many priceless experiences in the last half-decade as a result.

I still suffer from periods of depression, especially in winter. But my time no longer goes to waste.

If picking around the edges keeps me from sliding backwards, so be it.

Depression

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Depression Causes: Add Sleep to the List?

Yesterday’s post on my sleep apnea diagnosis got a lot of response. Two big lessons from all the feedback: Far more people have sleep apnea than I knew, and those who have since been treated recall the huge mental distress caused by inadequate sleep.

Mood music:

Said one friend: “BIll, I too have sleep apnea. It’s a vicious, horrible physical problem. You don’t even realize how badly the lack of REM and deep sleep is changing your behavior and your emotional stability. Also impacts you physiologically in many and varied ways, including poor metabolism and blood pressure.”

I’ve attributed a lot of things to my occasional bouts of depression: past battles with addictive behavior, the OCD when I let it run hot for too long, personal experiences with illness and death and lack of daylight in the winter. I never really considered the sleep angle, though I suppose I’ve known about that all along.

Getting to the bottom of my sleep patterns started as an effort to deal with snoring and was more for Erin’s sanity than mine. (She’s a light sleeper, which means my snoring really messes with her own sleep quality.) But the benefits of this experience may turn out to be much deeper.

I’ve also gotten a lot of feedback on the usefulness of CPAP machines. A couple of readers reported that it was of little help. Many more readers said the device changed their lives.

Said another friend: “The first night I slept with the CPAP machine was the best night of sleep I’d had in two decades — no exaggeration.”

I’ve been told the success or failure of this depends on how accurately the sleep doctors fit me for the mask. You can bet I’ll keep that in mind when I have it done.

I thank you all for the responses. I’ll keep you posted on how the machine works.

CPAP Masks

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Pushing It to 11 with a Better Night’s Sleep

According to the results of my sleep study, I have something called sleep apnea. I stop breathing for a few seconds or a little over a minute and then snore ferociously as the breathing kicks back in. I’m told mine is moderate to severe.

Scary, you say? Not really.

Mood music:

I know a few people with this condition, including my father. It afflicts people from all walks of life: the fat, the thin, the short, the tall, the young and the old. In my case, the root cause is a nose and sinus cavity full of bad plumbing. My snout is almost always clogged, and if I’m trying to breath through the nose everything stops until the mouth breathing takes over.

The doctor showed me a computer screen full of squiggly lines that measured brainwave activity, blood oxygen levels, REM vs. light sleep, etc. Throughout the night the study was done, the squiggly lines flattened out. Most of the time it was for 8–15 seconds. In a few cases, it lasted more than a minute. Wherever the breathing flatlined, another column of lines showed my blood oxygen levels dipping below the preferred level.

It explains a lot.

That it instigates my snoring is obvious. But I’ve always had a tendency to get sleepy in the middle of the day, and I admit to occasionally falling asleep while staring at my laptop. It also explains why I’m usually out cold within minutes of lying down and opening whatever book I’m reading. I’m never adequately rested, so my body sneaks in whatever rest it can throughout the day.

By extension, it’s almost definitely making any depression I get along the way worse than it would otherwise be. I know I had a shitty night’s sleep Saturday, and I spent much of yesterday cranky as a result.

I’ve had two surgeries in recent years to deal with the snoring. One was to correct a deviated septum (I’m convinced the procedure only made it worse). The other was to snip off the uvula. Both times they also installed pillar implants in the soft palate to prop things up. Being overweight is often cited as a root cause, and there’s surely some of that in my case. But I’ve also lost a ton of weight over time, especially since kicking flour and sugar.

The solution to all this?

I’m going to endeavor to drop another 10 or 15 pounds because that can’t hurt. But the bigger solution is that I’m getting a machine to help keep the airways open at night. The continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine uses mild air pressure to keep an airway open. The devices are smaller than they used to be. Mine will be about the size of a tissue box.

I’m excited to see what a full night of uninterrupted sleep is like. Despite the breathing trouble, I’ve managed to function at a vigorous level. With better sleep, I’m hoping to push it to 11.

Frustrated CPAP Patient