trying to stay awake

I have recently been told that I have Sleep Apnea and have although I knew there was a problem long ago. I have a question to everyone. I understand the problem I have at night but my day time problem is just awful. If I sit down I will be awake but then it starts my struggle to stay awake. I don't nod off and stay asleep it's seconds and it never stops. Since sitting down to write this I have nodded of many times. Does this happen to you all?

By the way my name is catherine. I have a little dog named Sophia and I adore her. She sleep a lot just like me. :)

Prior to being diagnosed with sleep apnea, I seemed to have few symptoms except having to go to the bathroom multiple times during the night and nodding off... while using power tools or riding a motorcycle. I drank copious quantities of energy drinks which helped only a little. My wife took a video of me at night while sleeping showing me I stopped breathing and then coming out with a gasp. I didn't know this was happening.

I had to insist on seeing my own sleep study report. It showed my blood oxygen was down into the very low 70s for long periods. PAP therapy cured this, I no longer doze during the day and NEVER get up during the night. I think, at least in my case, low blood oxygen was the issue that was most affecting me. Getting more deep sleep also probably is a contributor to better day wakefulness. I bought a gizmo to record SPO2 during the night to monitor my oxygen (gizmo called Pulse Oxymeter) and never drop below 95 so I am sure that PAP therapy fixed this issue. Get an in-clinic sleep study and look at the results. You can google each of the difficult medical terms especially if your clinic sleep doc isn't much on explaining things. You can then captain your own therapy ship with much more facility.

You must be very very tired to nod off several times at one sitting. Nodding off is very common, but doesn't effect me the same way. Do you ever go into kind of a dream state when you nod off?

Hi Catherine--I had a similar experience that I am slowly working my way out of. First, is your therapy working and are you adherent to it? Could very well be that your blood oxygen level is low at night, as wiredgeorge described above. definitely get the sleep study and get a clinician to talk with you about what is happening. Hold them accountable for explaining things. There is a drug for daytime sleepiness that is indicated for sleep apnea patients, but first you need hard data from a sleep study with an explanation from a clinician on what exactly is going on. good luck with it and let us all know how things turn out for you--

Yes I dose off ALL the time!!!!!!! Its pretty frustrating.

Hi Catherine, Prior to being diagnosed I used to dose off while waiting for something to happen or while waiting for something. It never happened while I was busy thinking about something or while driving, but if the TV was on and I was not interested in when was on, I would be asleep in no time. I don't think I could sit through a meeting before I was on CPAP, but after I got the machine I was determined it was going to cure my fatigue and cure it did, though I had a bad time with masks at the start. It was early days for CPAP and the choice of masks was not very good. After I found a mask that worked for me I never looked back again, I have never had fatigue since I started using cpcp.