A Very Frustrating Visit to My Doctor

I had my follow-up visit with my doctor for my sleep study today. I may have to find a new doctor.

She started off all gung-ho on the idea that i had sleep apnea that was preventing me from sleeping and that we should rush right out and get a Cpap machine for me. I pointed out to her that i actually slept LESS on the machine than i did off of it. She said "Well that was because you weren't used to the machine." I explained that the machine really didn't bother me all that much except a few times during the night. She said "Well, you're obviously a NUMBERS guy..." sly smile, pointing at the sheet of medical statistics that i keep for my doctors. "... but i'm talking about clinically."

Okay, first off, i'm a numbers guy when it is important to be a numbers guy. And it seems like with your health, numbers don't actually lie. So i produce the data and my doctor helps me to interpret it. Seems like about all that i CAN do. So i asked her... clinically... what is it about the sleep study that indicates use of a Cpap machine. She explained that i had less incidents of apnea on the machine than off of it. Excuse me, doctor, but isn't that NUMBERS? She said that without the machine i had 27 incidents. I said "How many did i have ON the machine?" So she starts looking through the results, and finally said that she couldn't really tell if it was better or the same or worse with the machine than without it. Honestly, i wasn't trying to back her into a corner, but i don't want to go through the time, expense and trouble of getting set up with one of these machines if it's not going to help.

Something that i forgot in my blog about the second night... when i woke up a little after two, i had terrible heartburn. This is not something that usually happens to me. I get heartburn so rarely that i can't remember the last time, and i can't EVER remember a time of it being this bad. She said that it could be "silent acid reflux". An article on this can be found here: http://ezinearticles.com/?Silent-Acid-Reflux&id=266723.

So, at the end of the appointment, she gave me a prescription for Pepcid, and i have no better idea of why i'm not sleeping now than i did before.

You are not alone.

Randal