Thumper Thinks Out Loud

The Spouse Thingy has a wicked snore, so wicked that he can be heard across the house and on an entirely different floor. It's not an exaggeration to say that I have been sitting in the living room, silently cursing whatever neighbor deigned to fire up a weed eater while he was sleeping, only to realize that it's just the Spouse Thingy, snoring.

It's only funny when you remove sleep apnea from the equation.

Now, for the most parts we are on totally different schedules. He works nights, I sleep nights. He comes home and goes to bed, and I putter around the house, the sound of his slumber just another noise that buzzes in the background. I'm used to it, and with the door closed and me elsewhere in the house, it's not so bad.

Until he stops snoring. Then I sit there and wonder if I need to make a noise and startle him into breathing again, leave him along because he's finally deep asleep enough that maybe he is breathing but just past REM sleep, or is he dead?

Don't laugh...once in a while that thought runs through my head. I suddenly realize I haven't heard him in a while, and I worry. Then he starts up again, and I can go about my merry business.

Today, though, a guy from a respiratory therapy company came to the house and fitted him with a CPAP machine. He had a sleep study done in January that shows he wakes over 70 times per hour, and he has apnea. Halfway through the study they woke him up and slapped a CPAP on him, and he slept quite well, so he has high hopes that getting this will mean he stops feeling so tired all the time.

I hope it's end of worrying about the effects of apnea will take on his body over time, especially his heart. But now I worry that I won't have my Yes-He's-Alive marker. I won't hear him snore anymore. Intellectually, I'll know it's because he has this nifty new toy to keep his airway open, but that morbid little voice in the back of my head is going to think "He's dead. He stopped breathing, but I won't go check because he has the machine, and it would be rude to disturb him, so he's dead and I won't know until it's past time for him to get up."

Yes, my brain works that way. I'll get over it.

But hopefully, he'll finally get some solid sleep, uninterrupted 70 times an hour. He needs the rest, because spring has sprung and I'm making my list of Things He Needs To Do around the house.

I'm nice that way.