(The following story by Patti Martin appeared on the Asbury Park Press website on March 29.)
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — For more than a decade, Greg A. Fenniman thought he was getting a good night’s sleep.
He’d follow a bedtime routine, get his seven to nine hours of sleep, and get up and go to work in the morning.
The problem was that the Ocean Township resident always felt tired.
“No matter how much sleep I got, by the middle of the day, I’d feel tired,” the 35-year-old recalls.
Throughout his 20s, Fenniman learned to live with the tiredness and didn’t give much thought to what the cause might be. Even his wife Claudine’s comments about his snoring at night didn’t give him pause for thought.
“I was always a heavy breather, a mouth breather,” Fenniman says, “that’s just the way it was.”
An operation in 1992 to repair a deviated septum didn’t help, either.
“It just wasn’t right for a person in his 20s to feel like I was feeling,” Fenniman says. “I couldn’t go on this way.”
Several more years would pass before Fenniman would finally be able to put a name to his problem: a sleep disorder called sleep apnea.
“I had never heard of it before the diagnosis,” Fenniman says. “I just thought it was something I was going to have to live with.”
Fenniman wasn’t alone in not realizing that he had a sleep disorder.
According to the National Institutes of Health National Center for Sleep Disorder Research, more than 70 million Americans suffer from disorders of sleep and wakefulness.
Fenniman, who was diagnosed at the Sleep Disorders Center at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, is among the more than 18 million Americans suffering from sleep apnea. In some ways, though, he’s lucky. According to the National Center for Sleep Disorder Research, it is conservatively estimated than 10 million Americans remain undiagnosed for the condition.
“Sleep disorders are more common than people think,” says Dr. Douglas S. Livornese, a physician on staff at Monmouth Medical’s Sleep Disorders Center. “Millions of Americans are affected by some type of sleep disorder . . . and, in many cases, they’re just not even aware of it.”
But, says Livornese, the feeling of excessive daytime sleepiness — despite a full night’s sleep — is “definitely a sign of a sleep disorder.”
Medical experts are hoping to educate Americans through the National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep Awareness Week. The theme of the event, being held Monday through Sunday, is “Sleep Well Tonight For a Better Tomorrow.”
Disorders such as sleep apnea, insomnia and narcolepsy can result not only in a drowsy daytime, they can also be dangerous to the point that they affect driving.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Sleep Foundation, drowsy driving claims more than 1,500 lives and causes at least 100,000 crashes in the United States each year.
“Sleep is a biological necessity for every living being,” Livornese points out, “and when we don’t get enough sleep, there are going to be problems.”
In Fenniman’s case, his sleep apnea would cause brief cessations in his breathing while he was sleeping. Of the two types of sleep apnea, Fenniman was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. This type of apnea, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, is characterized by the muscles in the walls of the throat relaxing while the person sleeps so that the walls collapse on themselves and obstruct the flow of air. After about 30 seconds, the obstruction is relieved and breathing resumes.
“Sleep apnea can have a very negative impact on your quality of life, and that’s why it’s important for people who are having sleep issues to seek diagnosis and treatment,” Livornese says.
By the time he made his way to the Sleep Disorders Center at Monmouth on May 15, 2003, Fenniman was willing to try anything.
He was growing more tired by the day and a break in consciousness while driving one day convinced Fenniman of the seriousness of his condition.
At the Sleep Disorders Center, Fenniman would spend the night and his sleep patterns would be monitored.
Fenniman laughingly says that he wasn’t settled in for more than a few hours than a diagnosis was given: sleep apnea.
“I had stopped breathing too many times,” he says.
Center staff then gave Fenniman a CPAP — or continuous positive airway pressure — device for the remainder of the stay. The device is a mask that provides pressure from a blower that forces air and prevents airway closure.
For Fenniman, it was a miracle.
“I woke up in the morning and felt wonderful,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it . . . I felt like a different person.”
While it took a little time to adjust to the CPAP — Fenniman must use the mask every night — these days he says he doesn’t even think twice about it.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” he says. “I just put it on, turn on the machine and get a great night’s sleep.”
And on those nights when the mask slips off or he leaves home with the device, Fenniman feels the difference.
“I wake up tired and not very happy,” he says. “The CPAP has made all the difference in the world.”
Livornese says there are a variety of treatments available for patients suffering with sleep disorders, from medications and machines to behavioral modification, weight loss and surgery.
“The key is the diagnosis,” he says, “and from there we can work on getting each person a good night’s sleep.”