Posted on 06/16/2017 9:47:08 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Sleep apnea is a condition in which a person’s breathing pauses during sleep. The pauses may be brief or last several minutes, according to information from the National Institutes of Health.
Fisher, 60, suffered a medical emergency on an international flight on Dec. 23. Her mother, longtime movie star Debbie Reynolds, died the following day.
...
Fisher’s brother, Todd Fisher, said he was not surprised by the results...
“I would tell you, from my perspective that there’s certainly no news that Carrie did drugs,” Todd Fisher said. He noted that his sister wrote extensively about her drug use, and that many of the drugs she took were prescribed by doctors to try to treat her mental health conditions.
Fisher long battled drug addiction and mental illness. She said she smoked pot at 13, used LSD by 21 and was diagnosed as bipolar at 24. She was treated with electroshock therapy and medication.
“I am not shocked that part of her health was affected by drugs,” Todd Fisher said.
He said his sister’s heart condition was probably worsened by her smoking habit, as well as the medications she took. “If you want to know what killed her, it’s all of it,” he said.
Todd Fisher said it was difficult to blame doctors who treated his sister because they were trying to help her.
“They were doing their best to cure a mental disorder. Can you really blame them?” Todd Fisher said. “Without her drugs, maybe she would have left long ago.”
(Excerpt) Read more at losangeles.cbslocal.com ...
You mom definitely needs to be checked. Sleep apnea is very serious. And, if she got a CPAP, she would feel so much better when she woke up. Hopefully you can convince her.
Glad your dad got his CPAP. Your description of his snoring sounds just like my dad’s was.
Have seen many ads for a simple electronic device which cleans the mask and tubes for these (rather than replacing them on schedule) Understand that many infections can be caused by bacteria filled, unclean masks/tubes. How would one clean the machine itself, or must it be replaced on schedule as well?
I’ve been on CPAP for a few months now.
Most nights I can sleep with the mask on. There are some that I pull it though.
Overall, I am doing a lot better with the unit. If I had any idea that I was so messed up, I would have done it way before.
I don’t get as fuzzy headed and fatigued before I went on the box.
New to CPAP? A word of advice. They take a little getting used to. Don’t give up on it. Too many people quit using it before giving it enough time to get used to it. Try different masks & head gear to see what works best for you.
I found that the ResMed full face mask works best for me. I LOVE my CPAP! (I used to stop breathing 600, yes 600 times a night. Leg kicking while sleeping is a bad sign.
“He died peacefully in his sleep”. No he didn’t, he stopped breathing one time too many for a little too long. VERY preventable. Loud snoring is a warning sign. GET TESTED! “It’s the only way to be sure”
Problem with a CPAP is that they can be very uncomfortable for some people to wear. I hated mine at first, constantly taking it off. After about two years of effort, including wearing it while watching TV, I have adapted to wearing while I sleep. Sleep almost through the night, now. Still, adapting to a CPAP can be difficult.
If you have sleep apnea that is materially affecting your quality of life you will learn to use CPAP no matter how uncomfortable. I had it, untreated, for over 50 years. Toward the end of my non-CPAP days I would fall asleep at stoplights or wake up on occasion heading down the berm on the interstate. I literally was an accident waiting to happen. After my first night on CPAP I felt so much better that I learned to overlook the minor annoyances and inconveniences of the treatment. I used a nasal mask, which leaked at times and gave me corneal abrasions so I started wearing goggles at night. I also had air blowing out of my mouth so I wore a chin strap which eventually messed up my jaw, so I went to taping my mouth shut with paper tape. CPAP is not for sissies, but fighting for your life is important. I have been CPAP-compliant for 16 years. I never go to sleep without it. The machine people are mentioning that cleans the mask and tube is called SoClean and it is worth the $300 investment. I do not have a humidifier with my machine, but people who do must take precautions to ensure that bacteria and mold don’t grow in the appliance.
I got a CPAP and have had GREAT sleep since. I wake up feeling good and the snoring is gone. Keep the machine clean and follow the instructions. Replace supplies frequently.
On top of everything mentioned she started to die after a long flight from London to LA. I think that might have been a big factor as well. If she had decided to take a slow route home via ship and land might she have not had this happen?
No it’s not and it’s a horrible thing to do to the spouse sleeping next to you. It’s also devastating for kids to wake up and realize that their old man isn’t snoring and rushing into the bedroom to find him dead. The expression on the face of an apnea victim is pretty ugly.
Yeah, you get to lay helpless in bed while fluid builds up around your heart until its pressing so hard your heart cant effectively pump blood any more and you are turning purple and gasping for air to breath, but your heart still trys and forces your blood pressure into astronomical numbers that eventually cause a massive brain bleed or other embolism that finally makes you bleed out.
Great way to go, just like you said.
This mask fits in your mouth like a sports mouthpiece and holds the nasal canular right where it needs to be and becasuse its connected to your face it moves with you and DOES NOT LEAK.
Every night for the last 7 years. Advice is free but my time to give it was not so you are ahead.
Its all working together. You are trying to sleep, obstructions in your airway wont allow it and you stop breatrhing. When you stop breathing while sleeping - your body does amazing things to keep you alive and try to wake you up.
Yes, the “snort’ is when you start breathing again but thats only an audible alarm as to what is happening in your body. Your body trys to wake you by shocking you, scaring you into being startled awake, becasue, HEY YOU ARE NOT BREATHING!
Every time you hear the “snort” this happens - Your abdomen muscles contract violently and compress the space around your chest and heart (* this also weakens and stretches the bag around the heart and makes you even more susceptible to congestive heart failure that is the hallmark of sleep apnea) , to make you forceable exhale and to bump your blood pressure up so your mind will wake up and you will start breathing again. During this you typicaly change from REM sleep stage 2 or 3 to stage 1 and will probly never reach stage 4 or 5 ever again without CPAP help.
This action has only taken a few seconds but has interuppted your sleep. Now imagine your body doing this over 200 times in one hour, all night long, every night of your life.
It is but everyone should get second and third opinions, physicians know a great deal less than they pretend to.
Long story with gruesome details redacted: After a long period of extreme multisystemic illness with many bizarre symptoms, many physicians including including neurologists, sleep specialist, and at least 3 ENTs, 10s of thousands of dollars and many tests later no one could figure out what was wrong.
One of the least significant of my complaints was that I snored like a chainsaw when I slept but I hardly ever slept because as soon as I did I began experiencing a sensation like I was choking on someones whole fingernail or a breadbag tag. This was mostly ignored other than to get me set up with a CPAP and to assure me that there was no other real treatment for my severe apnea.
The problems didnt go away. After 5 years of researching my illness on my own I managed to convince my physician that Lymes and the associated infections that come with it was one of the only possible candidates that could cause my problems and that as an outdoorsman who lived in Germany and Wisconsin that I was a very likely candidate. Tests said no but he treated me anyway. By this time my primary was quite convinced that nothing was really wrong and that I was developing mental health problems and told me as much but he decided to humor me.
(More than you wanted to know detail ahead.)
A month of doxycycline later, a number of outdoors related objects fell out of the sinus infection that I was assured I didnt have. One non-nature related item came out which was a diamond shaped plastic piece of confetti about 3/8x5/8" that I hadnt seen since about 17 years previous. How all these things got in there I will never know, nonetheless, at least half my health problems including the "untreatable other than cpap" apnea went away. My family often checks on me now because I sleep so quietly now that they think Ive died.
The other half of the problems, and a circus of quacks later, I had to find the answer to also but, thats another story.
My primary was very experienced and "the best diagnostician around" according to other physicians. He was the guy they regularly went to to find the answer. He couldnt find the answer even with a large team of help. Your physician probably isnt as good and may have even been at the bottom of the class.
I turned out to be wrong in my diagnosis but no less wrong than the army of physicians. I was wrong for much less money and it was the fact that I didnt give up that kept me off psych meds and eventually stumbled on to the cure. People need to start realizing that physicians are not only not infallible but that they dont know more about your health than you do, they are just trained to read the tests better. If your physician makes fun of you for using online sources or doing your own research then you are dealing with just another pompous ass and you need to find a real healthcare professional.
I would even go one further and say that physicians need to pull their collective heads out of their asses and realize that apnea is not a condition itself but the symptom of something else but that again is a rant for another time.
Yeah. Either that or a cocktail of prescription drugs which is commonly given out to hollywood types.
She was on an airplane... She was a known heavy drug & alcohol user. Sleep apnea was the least of the causes.
Too bad her death caused the death of Debbie Reynolds the next day.
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