Never dropping into REM sleep has a very bad effect on your mental and physical health.
It might even be the root cause of some mental problems.
Even in people without sleep apnea are bad tempered and foggy when they are short of sleep.
Living that way for years begins to wear you down, laying in mental pathways, that even after the sleep problem has been corrected can still cause health problems.
Sleep and dreaming is not well understood even now but we do know that it does far more than rest tired muscles.
Thanks for your explanation. For my part, I awake with sometimes extensive but always vague recollections of my dreams, often of an epic nature. Sometimes I can make some kind of sense out of these recollections. I hope this portends well for my mental and physical health :-)