Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.
- Sophocles

I am recently returned to my home after a two day stay at the hospital. Rather than going in because I’m bipolar, I went in because I have sleep apnea and needed a full evaluation. This was a pretty significant thing for me, as I have an aversion to hospitals that stems in part from having seen too many family members die in one, and in part from a fear of being confined to the whims of doctors. I don’t like being hooked up to monitors at all, and the idea of turning myself into Locutus of Borg with cables, sensors and other stuff had my stomach churning in slippery knots. Go I did, however, and I must say that I’m a happier man for having done so.

For starters, the people at the hospital weren’t as bad as I’d feared. They didn’t pull out pitchforks and start turning me over and over in boiling perdition. Even if they had been demons, they would have been far too busy to torture me. My room was not a double room, but a single room, and had a sort of hotel quality to it … it was nearly twice the size of the largest dorm room I ever had in college, and was complete with sink, lockable closets and a table with two chairs for relaxing with a guest. My fear of being confined was also quickly diminished as I learned that in the afternoons, we could leave the hospital grounds and spend the day as we chose.

Getting hooked up to all the sensors wasn’t something I changed my mind about – I don’t like cables hanging off of me, and I especially don’t like it when I sleep. My first night there, I had the impression that I didn’t sleep at all. It was more than an impression, I lay there and looked at stuff for what felt like hours on end. I did battle with a mosquito for at least an hour, the little beast constantly buzzing around one of my ears, then flying away as my hands moved, then coming back to repeat the process. Every movement I made, with cables dragging along behind me, I felt like Jacob Marley. These sensors, however, told a different tale: I did sleep, enough to snore over a thousand times; my oxygen saturation went pretty low; and I never entered the deeper stages of sleep.

The next night I was cabled up again (after making sure I found and killed that mosquito during the daytime), and I was hooked up to a CPAP machine. For those who don’t know, the purpose of the CPAP machine is to provide positive pressure in the airway, to keep it from closing down at night and thus blocking one’s ability to breathe. It took a little getting used to, but I seemed to take to it pretty quickly and found myself sleeping through the entire night. The nurse woke me up at 0530, to take me off the cables and machine, and I felt something I haven’t felt after a night’s sleep in over a decade: rested and ready for the day to begin. Rather than go back to bed, which was an option, I chose to stay up. I looked after my hygiene, then I packed up all of my stuff and made the bed, then I sat down and read for two hours without falling asleep (something that I can’t remember ever managing before, especially that early in the morning). Throughout the rest of the day, I felt positive, energetic and simply ready for whatever was to come, without any sign of these feelings stemming from the hypomania or mania of bipolar disorder. The next days after, I slept the old fashioned way and, despite feeling all my usual grogginess, I somehow managed to still feel more motivation than usual. What was prominently absent was the feeling of any common task overwhelming me. Last night I slept with my very own CPAP machine, this time without all the sensor cables, and slept quite nicely. The 13 millibars of pressure I have to have to keep my breathing passage open took a little getting used to; but as before, I woke up early in the morning (this time before 0500), and felt ready for the day to come. Today I’ve managed to move around quite a bit and get some stuff done, even a few things I didn’t necessarily have to do, but just felt like doing anyway.

I don’t know whether or not I’m feeling the way I should ‘normally’ feel, or whether this is just an effect that wears off in time. At the hospital, I was warned that the CPAP machine usually takes some getting used to, and I’m frankly a little nervous at the fact that I seem to have taken to it like a duck to water. However, if this is the way I should normally feel; then I would highly recommend that anyone out there who has a snoring problem talk to a doctor about having a sleep study done. For a number of years, I’ve been fighting against what seems to be a treatment-resistant depression. I’ve sampled one or two medications from every major family of antidepressant, and am currently dealing with my third therapist and second psychiatrist. Up to now, hypomania and mania have been the only things that have broken through my depression, and even then it’s usually still a mixture of mania and depression. I will continue to write about my progress with sleep and my CPAP machine; but based on what I’ve felt from just my second night of treatment with this machine, I think it’s possible that my previously unresponsive depression just might become responsive. For people dealing with depression or bipolar disorder, this might be something of interest.