Sleep Study for night time workers

[GrammaBear]

Well went to the appointment with my doctor, and he didn't have the results to the last sleep study. He said sense I slept on 2-hours there's a good chance that I'll need to redo the test. I also found out that the hospitals here in town do not do sleep tests during the day, only at night. So I'm going to run into the same problem. With my first test, I have to take a sleeping pill with one of my anti-anxiety medications. I had to drug myself to sleep. The reason I didn't take anything this time is because I just had gastric bypass and I can't take time release meds anymore, and I don't know how the other pill will effect me now. The downside, if the last test is accepted and it's better than the first, I may not get treatment for my central sleep apnea. While I was in the hospital, I had to be moved to the ICU because I stopped breathing and my oxygen would crash pretty low, even on 3 litters of oxygen. I had to be put on a mask and given 8 litters. So I got something wrong with me. I just hope this sleep study is rejected but I'll still have to figure out a way to sleep.

Is there even a slim chance that a nearby hospital would consider doing a daytime sleep test for a "shift worker" like yourself? I know it is frustrating for you, but don't give up. There has to be an answer out there for you. I am a plus size woman too and never thought I had sleep apnea. Strangely enough my husband kept insisting that I snored so loud he could hear me in the basement. I thought he was teasing me - turns out he wasn't.

[Mosquitobait]

Juarez, call your insurance company and get a list of the sleep study centers they cover. Then call them all. Be willing to go out of town to get a proper sleep study done during the day.

I know my health system contracts with a bunch of sleep centers. One of the questions they ask is if you are a shift worker. They arrange a couple of times a month to accommodate shift worker sleep studies at one facility, which has better soundproofing in the rooms, so that they can be done during the daytime.

[AnalogDog]

I finally went through exposure therapy for fear of masks and was ready to get set up on on a cpap/bipap machine. I went to the sleep study cpap titration and he never put the dang thing on because I only slept 2-hours. I work the night shift, and as much as I tried, I couldn't get to sleep. The night before the study, I got 4-hours of sleep, and when I went in, I was dog tired. But after 2-hours of sleep, I was wide awake. I've been trying to get my central sleep apnea dealt with almost a year and now. I'm out of ideas. My insurance won't pay for another study, so I'm stuck on oxygen, which hasn't helped with the insomnia, and daytime tiredness. I don't understand why this is so hard, my husband had his cpap titration the first night in a split study and a week later had the machine. I'm about to throw my hands up and quit. I was thinking about auto titration cpap/bipap machines but do you need a titration study before hand? Any ideas?

You should've been studied in the daytime; that's what is appropriate for night shift workers. That's what they did with me. If you're having mostly centrals, an autotitrator is probably NOT going to work well for you. Get your doctor to write your insurance a letter as to WHY you NEED to have a proper diagnostic study done DURING YOUR REGULAR SLEEP PERIOD. Also get him or her to write you a scrip for a sleep aid, to be taken the (day) of the study, so that you WILL sleep long enough to get an accurate study. Once that's done, you will know how to procede. If you have complex sleep apnea, or mostly centrals, you will probably need something totally different than an autotitrator, which are only designed for obstructive sleep apnea, not centrals. HTH....