Meet Betty: A Wake-Up Call
Betty, a lively 56-year-old high school teacher, was at her wit's end with constant fatigue. She woke each morning with a groan as the weight of her fatigue settled on her. The kids she taught kept her on her toes during lessons, but she had caught herself dozing during a staff meeting more than once. The drive home was getting dangerous, too. She’d survived multiple close calls after briefly falling asleep while driving. The future looked bleak.
For forty years, she struggled with insomnia, barely managing 4 hours of restless sleep each night. Sleep, that essential pillar of health, was always out of reach, and the impact on her life was huge.
Betty had developed fibromyalgia, dealing with widespread pain, chronic fatigue, memory problems, and mood swings. Despite her best efforts, she gained weight due to a slowed metabolism, and her medical records were littered with terms like "treatment-resistant depression" and "anxiety disorder."
Over the years, Betty saw countless healthcare professionals and went through numerous tests, but one potential issue remained unexplored. As a widow without children or siblings, Betty slept alone and no one heard her snoring, so it had never occurred to her or her doctors.
But her diagnostic sleep study measured her snoring as ‘Very Loud Persistent’. It also found she was suffering from severe obstructive sleep apnea.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) can often hide behind other health conditions, like insomnia. In fact, there is an intricate and surprising link between the conditions. Counter-intuitively, a person’s inability to get to sleep, their insomnia, can actually be because of the OSA. The body has learned that it stops breathing when it sleeps, so it remedies this by staying awake.
Betty couldn’t sleep because her body was protecting her from her apnea. But as Betty’s apnea was successfully treated over the following months, her insomnia began to improve too.
By sticking to her treatment with ongoing support from the SCS team, Betty underwent a remarkable transformation.
Now she wakes up refreshed and full of energy, ready to embrace each day with a renewed zest for life. Her insomnia and related health issues are now fully controlled and becoming distant memories, replaced by a vibrant sense of well-being.
