Here’s a funny story. It’s about a husband who learned to stop his snoring on his own. Well, actually he got some help from his wife. But of course, he won’t admit that.
He starts his story animatedly, describing how his wife recorded his snoring.
My wife complained that I snore.
Ever forgiving in other aspects of our co-habitation, she decided to record me in the act.
She played it back while I was sleeping. She played it back in all its orchestral glory, thinking this might cure me.
But she says I broke into a two-part harmony.
She tried giving me left hooks and I woke up with bruises up my arm.
She said, “I thought you were dead. You stopped breathing.”
I heard, “You stopped breeding.”
“I was doing it in my sleep!” I exclaimed.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
Aside from his snoring issues, the husband obviously has some hearing issues as well. Poor wife has to put up with both. Then again, you got to hand it to the husband, he eventually admitted that he had a snoring problem.
It takes a certain amount of self-criticism to reach the conclusion that your wife might be right about: a) your snoring, and b) about the need to do something about your snoring. So, as the final submission of the snorer to the snoree, I agreed to go to a sleep clinic to be tested.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
So, he went to a sleep clinic. He checked himself in right in the middle of winter. You’d think the sleep clinic would be a posh, comfortable place. Based on his description, it was a far cry from it.
The bedroom I was assigned to was like a room in the Bates Motel. The art on the wall was enough to give me nightmares – blackbirds with yellow eyes, although the caption read, “Moonlight over the Prairies.”
The technician went to work on me. He placed suction caps with wires on my head and face. The wires were inserted into a box at my bedside that would transmit my brainwaves and my movements to the technician’s screen.
I felt like Frankenstein’s monster.
There were cameras on the walls. Shades of The Twilight Zone.
He told me to go to sleep now. He would be in the next room and if I needed anything, I just had to call out.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
So, he called out when he needed to pee and that pissed off the technician.
The technician came in rubbing his eyes. He unplugged me from the machine. I had to go to the washroom with the wires dangling from my face. I was terrified I’d run into someone. Norman Bates, perhaps.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
The husband goes on to describe his experience in the sleep clinic. Although it was pretty obvious that his experience was for from being pleasant, he seemed to have found humor in it.
To cut the long story short, the husband was diagnosed with sleep apnea.
A week later I was summoned to the doctor who told me that I had sleep apnea and I needed a CPAP machine.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
Even if he was a bit reluctant to wear the CPAP mask, he decided to go through with it. He wasn’t going to throw away the hundreds of dollars he had paid the sleep clinic that recommended the CPAP device.
Eleven hundred dollars later, I was the reluctant owner of a device that blows air up your nose through a hose attached to a face mask that makes you look like a Second World War fighter pilot.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
So, did the CPAP mask work? According to his wife, it did.
That was because I couldn’t sleep.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
The story ends with the husband getting used to the CPAP. As a matter of fact, he has even found another purpose for it.
But slowly, slowly I’m getting used to fighting the Battle of Britain every night. And on Halloween, I’ll wear the mask when I answer the door.
(Via: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-how-i-learned-to-stop-snoring-reluctantly/)
The story is pretty funny but there really is a more affordable way to deal with snoring and even sleep apnea. This is not to say that what the husband did was wrong because it’s not. Going to a sleep clinic is also an option but it could get pretty expensive.
Snoring mouthpieces won’t cost an arm and a leg. For example, the https://snoringmouthpiecereview.org/good-morning-snore-solution is so affordable that you can even afford to get another piece for your partner. The best thing about the Good Morning Snore Solution is that you won’t look scary when you wear it.
