When James was discharged from the NICU and was finally able to go home, we received a bunch of equipment from home health. Everything James needed to survive outside the hospital: pulse oximeter (pulse ox) that constantly monitors the oxygen saturations in his blood as well as his heartrate; feeding pump and feeding bags because he his tube fed; oxygen tanks and nasal cannulas in case he needed to be put on oxygen; suction machine because he needs frequent suctioning to remove secretions from his nose and mouth; and a sleep apnea monitor in case he stops breathing in the middle of the night.
We asked home health why they were giving us a sleep apnea monitor and they said that they were just filling the order that they received. Neither Stacy nor I recall sleep apnea ever being mentioned in the two months that he was in the NICU. James has a lot of issues, but we don’t think that sleep apnea was one of them. Maybe it was a mistake? Or maybe they were just covering all the bases. You know, just in case.
Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder where someone repeatedly stops breathing while sleeping. There are a two types of sleep apnea: obstructive sleep apnea which is caused by a blockage of the airway, and central sleep apnea where the brain fails to signal the muscles to breathe.
We’ve been using the sleep apnea monitor since James came home from the NICU at the end of October and, to be blunt, we absolutely HATE it! It’s supposed to beep if it senses that James has stopped breathing. This damn machine is constantly beeping throughout the night. We don’t think James has ever stopped breathing, but the stupid apnea monitor beeps anyway. Too many false alarms!
Stacy and I have discussed if James even needs the sleep apnea monitor. He is on a pulse ox 24/7 so if he were to stop breathing, his sats would drop and the pulse ox would go off. So, does he really need the sleep apnea monitor?
In order to find out if James even has sleep apnea, he did a sleep apnea study at an area hospital. It was probably the most uncomfortable night for all three of us. The room that they put James in was extremely small. There was a hospital bed for James to sleep on. Stacy and I slept in chairs. Well, at least we tried to. It probably would have been more comfortable for one of us to sleep in the car, but it was only about 25 degrees outside. We thought James would get a decent night’s sleep since he had the comfy bed. That was until they started putting all the wires on him so they could monitor his breathing; lung and brain activity; and his heartrate.
The whole point of a sleep apnea study is to see if you stop breathing during sleep, and if so, to try to figure out what causes you to stop breathing. We will have to wait for the results of the study, but I don’t think James got much, if any, sleep last night, so I don’t think it will tell us if he has sleep apnea or not. Would you be able to sleep with all of this crap on your head?
