From severe to mild/moderate

After my recent sleep study, I was wondering when I would receive the results. I was tempted to call the doctor's office later that same week but figured I'd just wait for them to call me, which they did earlier this week. On Friday, I had my doctor's visit and got the lo-down.

In short, my sleep apnea is gone from severe to mild/moderate. In the doctor's words:

I'm very happy you lost all that weight. It's a good thing you lost weight but the sleep apnea didn't go away.

So while the impact of my sleep apnea has lessened, it hasn't completely gone away. And my body will attest to that. I haven't worn my CPAP with regularity, okay, I haven't worn it at all, since my sleep study and most days I need to lie down for a bit of a nap. But last night I wore it and right now I feel great.

I got a copy of my sleep study and it has some statistics on it. Only thing is, I'm not sure what's good or not. According to the sleep study, I had 462.0 minutes of total bed time, which seems like an awful lot. That's just under eight hours, which honestly to me is a lot. Rare is the time I get in eight hours. It took me 14 minutes to fall asleep, took me 209 minutes to get to my first REM period (normal is 90 minutes) and my sleep efficiency was 88.7 percent... whatever that last number means. Sounds like an important stat.

Before I continue, a quick refresher course on stages of sleep:

Stage 1 Awake: this means you are not asleep
Stage 2 Light Sleep: you're out but your right at the surface
Stage 3/4 Slow Wave Sleep: also referred to as deep sleep
Stage REM: for some people, an earthquake or some other act of God couldn't jar them out from this stage. Your eyes move and flutter during this stage, and about 20-25 percent of the night is spent here.

Now, during the sleep study I slept some time without a CPAP and some time with the CPAP.

Without the CPAP

Stage 1: 5.0
Stage 2: 63.0
Stage 3/4: 23.3
Stage REM: 8.7

At 2:55, the sleep tech woke me up, put my CPAP on and let me fall back asleep. That stats (which I think might look a little distorted because I was already asleep)

Stage 1: 9.0
Stage 2: 39.5
Stage 3/4: 0.0
Stage REM: 51.5

So I slept good that last two hours (she woke me up for got at 5:09:14 am, apparently). There loads of other stats but I don't know what means what (I had 37 PML arousals, hey now). But all in all, looks encouraging.

Anyway, one other good thing. My blood pressure the previous time I'd gone to the doctor's was 144/70-something but on Friday it was at 122/68. I guess it means I wasn't as stressed as the first time, which is strange because that time I went alone and on Friday my daughters went with me.

But the kicker, last time I weighed at 189.8 or so, just under 190, and Friday I weighed 185.9. Sweet!