I thoroughly questioned this method, but my doctor explained to me the other option of coming into a facility to do extensive testing would cost upwards of $2,000, even with my wonderful insurance. It would also require me sleeping in a doctor’s office from time to time. He assured me videotaping myself would be the easiest and cheapest way and one of his nurses assured me she did the same exact thing and it worked well.
I couldn’t help but laugh that night when I set up my camera and tripod aimed at my bed like I was going to shoot some kind of low budget porn, but I figured it was worth it to find out if I had an ailment that would shave years off of my life and to save some serious money. The biggest actual downside of the thing to me was wearing pajamas for the first time since I was a preteen. I had grown accustomed to sleeping in my birthday suit to aide in keeping myself cool in the fight against the warm Southern California nights.
The three weeks of filming went by quickly. I was putting in long days at work and pretty much coming home and crashing each night. The only time the filming actually really affected me was one Saturday when I came home drunk, hit record and then passed out fully clothed on top of the covers. I considered deleting my drunken moment, but figured it might be good to have a comparison to see how getting drunk affected my potential sleep apnea. I left it on there when I turned in my recordings to my doctor.
It took about a month before I was summoned back to my doctor’s office to go over the results.
Things started out well initially. My doctor told me he didn’t think I had sleep apnea and that I had saved thousands of dollars and countless hours of facility testing, but things quickly took a sharp turn.
I still remember my doctor casually saying the phrase that completely changed my life.
