Got my results back.

I'm pretty messed up.

I was left alone in the doctor's office for about five minutes, so I had time to poke at the results of my sleep test, which were displayed on his screen. My interpretation frightened me a bit, and I wasn't far off.

Yes, the doctor said. I have sleep apnea. Severe sleep apnea. Sleep apnea like he's never seen before.

Doctors diagnose sleep apnea if you have at least ten episodes of apnea an hour (moments where you stop breathing temporarily). They call this the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). An AHI of less than 5 is considered normal. An AHI of 5-15 is mild; 15-30 is moderate and more than 30 events per hour characterizes severe sleep apnea.

I stop breathing 80 times an hour.

Thankfully, my oxygen levels don't drop to threatening levels. My lowest level of oxygen saturation for the entire night was 69%, and I averaged 90.4% overall.

Still. That means that 80 times an hour I would stop breathing, my oxygen sat would begin to drop, and then I would start breathing again and bring it back up. Scary.

And the snoring. They calculate your snoring index (SI) based on basically how many times an hour do you snore. I can't seem to find any info on average rates or anything, but the highest I can find on the net is something around 300 or so.

My index is 796.7. I snore an average of 13 times a minute. That's every four seconds all night long.

The chart is more telling. The results have this little bar chart. Every time you snore all night, the chart makes a little vertical line. The higher the line, the louder the snoring. The more lines, the more frequent the snoring it.

An average chart looks something like this:

MY chart looks something like this:

So not only do I snore all the time, my average snoring volume is off the chart.

He's sending me for a test to check my actual lung functioning, to make sure I'm actually capable of taking in enough air. And he's sending me to get a CPAP machine. It's a device that continually pumps air through my nose while I sleep, keeping the pipes open. It stops the snoring, keeps the oxygen up and gives a better sleep. I will fall asleep easier, stay asleep better, and sleep much deeper (giving me a more restful sleep.

On the minus side, this means I may have to sleep with a mask strapped to my head every night for the rest of my life.

Sexy.

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