May 16th, 2007
A sleep lab patient, Pasadena resident William H. Chapman, was tested after his wife wrote his doctor to express concern about his restless sleep. Chapman, 61, has been a heavy snorer for decades.
“The descriptions of my snoring went from something like a growling bear to a machine that was going to knock down the house,” he said. When he and his son went camping in southern Utah last year, his son asked him to sleep in the truck.
He felt bone-tired during the day, what he describes as “30 years struggling against this weariness that you feel perpetually. No alertness. No get-up-and-go.”
Finally, Chapman spent a night at Torrance Memorial, plugged into the polysomnograph. The test results were startling: He was holding his breath as many as 57 times an hour, each time for 10 to 40 seconds. He would wake repeatedly as he held his breath, meaning that he unknowingly was sleeping only four or five hours a night.
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