Some much needed sleep

I’ve been feeling pretty tired recently, well, for about 10 years. Various trips to the doctor have resulted in all manner of weird diagnosis’ for this, including when I was 30 the wonderful medical opinion of “it’s just because you’re older now, it’s normal, of course you won’t feel as energetic as you did in your 20’s” erm…. I’m not an expert or anything but I’m pretty sure that’s not right.

Over the past 10 years I’ve been to a few different doctors to complain about tiredness, and I’m not talking feeling a little bit snoozy, I’m talking the fighting to keep your eyes open sleepiness. During this time my weight has been slowly climbing and this has been making the sleep issue worse and the lack of sleep in turn makes my weight worse – it’s a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.

Eventually I got fed up with doctors and being the geek that I am (though a somewhat tardy geek in this situation) took matters into my own hands.

Google is your friend. After a bit of Googling I found a symptom called EDS, or excessive daytime sleepiness. Bingo! I booked myself in at a sleep clinic to get this investigated and it turns out I’m waking myself up around 120 times a night, now if only someone had checked for this 10 years ago. The cure? A CPAP machine or surgery. Day 1 of the CPAP machine and I slept through the night. It’s going to take more than a few weeks to catch up on 10 years lack of sleep, but I’m already feeling a million times better than I have in years.

The surgery is a somewhat scary option. The normal surgery for obstructive sleep apnoea is an operation on your throat that is only 50% successful and may affect the pitch and frequency of your voice along with lots of other equally concerning side effects, whereas bariatric surgery will fix the problem in around ooh… 100% of cases. Wonder which I’d prefer? Being a singer there is no way on earth I am going to let someone mess around with my throat, especially when the success rate is so low.

The surgery I’ve opted for and am having next Monday will fix the sleep problem permanently - yay! I’m completely terrified as it will be a very major change in my life, but I’m also looking forward to finally getting some quality sleep again. So everyone raise a glass to sleep, getting my energy back, thinking without cotton wool and exercising without the feeling of jogging through treacle.

Hurrah!