Chan Legacy

Don’t play play… don’t ignore that loud, irregular snoring of your husband or yourself!

Daddy had been snoring for the longest time. For the past 4 years, the sound became unbearable and I had to wear ear plugs to sleep.  And recently I was doing regular ear candling, which I thought would clean out the ear wax pushed in by the ear plug… but I was wrong!  My ears became so so itchy, that I had to finally consult an ENT specialist, Dr Adrian. 

Apparently, the ear candle left candle wax deposits ON my ear drums and it became so encrusted that Dr Adrian had to suck them all out.  It was pretty scary to have the metal thingy sucking on your ear drum, quite deafening, but the relief it gave….awwwwww man….. (so conclusion… please DO NOT go for ear candling!)

Dr Adrian suggested that I bring Daddy in for a consult, because it is not just the snoring sound, he could be having breathing problems and affect his health in future.  So he did.  Initially quite defensive during the consult, he agreed to a sleep clinic test.  Someone came to our house and put a little machine on his arm, with a little tag on his chest and index finger.  He slept with it and they picked up the machine the next morning.

The next time we went for a consult, Dr A shared with us the results of the sleep test.

1. Daddy stopped breathing 46 times an hour!!!!  (anything more than 40 times is a severe case, daddy was super severe!)

2. His oxygen level dropped to 70%

3. His heart rate ranged from 38-111 beats/min, which is a light jog, which means his heart was working so hard to make him breath.  

4. His sleep efficiency is only 60%.  40% of the time he was in a “wake stage”

This confirmed my fear, because sometimes I do observe Daddy when he is sleeping, and he does stop breathing, sometimes for a whole minute!  But I wasn’t sure whether he stopped breathing or he was breathing shallowly.  Anyway, in the long run, it is bad for the heart and he might just stop breathing in his sleep for good!

Now Daddy is taken aback, he suddenly become very conscious about it, he mentioned that he woke up gasping for air when he was on overseas business trip, but he didn’t think much about it.  He opted for surgery, hoping it will make things better.

So 7th August 2008, he went for surgery and was warded for 1 night.  Procedures included:

1. Submucous reduction inferior turbinoplasty
- To reduce the size of the inferior turbinate, which protrudes from the sidewall of the nose. Large turbinates can cause nasal obstruction.

2. Septoplasty
- To straighten the septum, which is the wall inside your nose that separates one nostril from the other.

3. Adeniodectomy via nasoendoscopic approach
- To remove enlarged adenoids.

4. Tonsillectomy
- To remove tonsills.

5. Uvuloplatopharyngoplasty
- To remove excess tissue in the throat to make airway wider, for Daddy, it is the soft palate.

Daddy was on the 10th day of his 21 days fast when he went under the knife.  He initially refused to break fast, but his recovery was so slow and painful, that we literally had to force him to break his fast.  (But God was gracious, what he was fasting for did come to pass!  Thank you God!)

Because of his initial fasting, and also his lower tolerance of pain, it was a painful recovery for him.  He had adverse reactions to the painkillers and could not stop hiccuping and regurgitating, after 2 nights, he was warded into Mt E hospital again to be on drip and IV for painkillers.  He stayed for another 2 nights. After his discharge, he was hurting badly again.  It was so bad that every time he drink or eat, he was literally banging his head against the wall!  So we went back to the clinic and they put him on drip for antibiotics because he was having an infection.  He had to go to the clinic 3 times a day for the drip cos he didn’t want to stay in.

Hiaz… it was so bad that he said to me that if he knew it was going to be so painful, he wouldn’t have opted for surgery.  It got to a point where he blamed me for making him go through all these.  (*sigh*  Darling… not for me, I don’t mind continuing with my ear plugs, but it is for your long term health lah!!!)

But it is true, what has always been said… “Even this shall pass…”  After suffering for 8 days, suddenly on the 9th day, the pain subsided from a scale of 10/10 to 6/10, and rapidly got better and better.  After 2 weeks of MC, Daddy returned to work.

Well, he is still snoring, but at least I can observe that it is regular snoring, with very very few episodes of respiratory disturbances.  He is still due for his follow up consult and I think we should do a sleep clinic test again to check.  Let’s pray and hope that he gets better.