Word: apnea
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Dates: during 1976-1976
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Siegel was one of the 50,000 or more Americans who suffer from a little-known, and often misdiagnosed disorder called sleep apnea (literally, want of breath). During a single night, they may wake up 400 or 500 times. These interruptions are so brief, only a few seconds or so, that apnea victims are usually totally unaware of them and at a loss to explain the morning-after blahs. When these patients take their complaint to a doctor, they usually get no help. The problem is that the physician sees the patient in the daytime...
What did finally help Siegel was a new variant of an old emergency surgical procedure: the tracheotomy−cutting an opening into the windpipe and thus totally bypassing the blocked breathing passage. First introduced in apnea a decade ago, such operations . have now been performed on about 30 Americans at the 20 U.S. sleep centers now in existence. The procedure is relatively simple, but leaves the patient with a hole in his throat...
...inconspicuous little breathing tube in the incision−thus assuring normal speech. He usually can conceal the surgical paraphernalia by wearing a turtleneck sweater. At night the plug is removed, and only a few days or so after the operation, nocturnal breathing usually is dramatically improved. The apnea itself is not cured, and might return if the hole were closed at night. But the operation clearly makes life bearable again. Siegel, for example, is now functioning wide-awake during the day and sleeping soundly at night−without snoring−for the first time in years. Says he: "My wife...