8:56 AM
Anonymous
My snoring has driven people mad over the years.
One of the worst times was when I caught a sleeper train in Australia — and kept half the carriage awake, apparently.
My partner, June, is a light sleeper and hates my snoring — so much so that I was relegated to the spare room a few years ago.
It started in my 40s and over the years I’ve tried gadgets such as nasal strips to improve airflow, but nothing has ever helped.
Then, about six years ago, June said I’d started making really strange noises in my sleep.
She said it was as though I had stopped breathing and was gasping for air.
Looking back, I did feel exhausted a lot of the time, but I just put it down to ageing.
I also blamed my age for the fact I was having memory problems. Sometimes I would leave the house and forget where I was going.
June was so worried about the noises I was making while asleep that I decided to see my GP.
Two years ago, I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnoea, where you stop breathing while asleep and wake up to kick-start your breathing again.
In my case, my tongue was flopping back in my throat when I was asleep, blocking my airway so I couldn’t breathe.
My specialist, Mr Kotecha, explained my memory problems could have been caused by the lack of oxygen to my brain, which was effectively causing it to malfunction.
The lack of oxygen also increased my risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, which was worrying.
By coincidence, at the time I was diagnosed, Mr Kotecha said he and a colleague were trialling a type of robotic surgery they thought would be suitable for me.
It would cut away some of my tongue so even if it did flop to the back of my throat during the night, it wouldn’t be bulky enough to block my airway. I jumped at the chance.
Mr Kotecha explained he would do three things: take off a bit of my epiglottis — located behind the tongue — so it wouldn’t vibrate so much, which is what was causing the snoring.
He would also shave a bit off my tongue to make my airway bigger so it couldn’t get obstructed when I was asleep.
Lastly, he would remove some of the top of my mouth, again to make the airway bigger
He said that until now, it had been almost impossible to do the operation manually, which is why the robot was so exciting.
I had the operation a year ago at St Mary’s Hospital, London. It took a couple of hours and when I woke up from the anaesthetic I wasn’t in pain.
Because it’s a new procedure — I was the third person in the country to have the op — I stayed in for two nights. It took a couple of weeks for everything to settle down.
Now I sleep eight hours straight and I’m less tired. I still snore a bit, but it’s not nearly as bad.
My memory hasn’t got any worse. I’m still in the spare room, but hope I’ll be allowed back eventually.
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