love? motel 6? or nights on cold corinthian leather

most people that i've told that my wife has sleep apnea get a worried look on their faces......then half of them say "that's too bad", and the other half say "what exactly is "sleep apnea?"". my answer is, "fuck, i don't know, she snores and she stops breathing." before the ailment took the life of former nfl legend reggie white, i had never even heard of sleep apnea. even after my wife started working for a company that specializes in respiratory medicine, including sleep apnea, i still didn't have any idea what it was. all i knew was that the company treated her well and paid her very well. then about three years or so ago i would go to bed at night and she would be snoring. she never snored much when we first got together, and i thought she only snored when she had had a couple drinks, but then the snoring got progressively worse even when she didn't drink. then it got to the point where she snored loudly and then would stop breathing completely. i would lay there for a minute waiting for her to start breathing again, and then i would shake her and she would start to breath. it sounded like she was struggling for air, sniffling and snorting and i thought to myself, this can't be good. as a matter of fact, it was terrifying. i asked her about it and she told me that it sounded like sleep apnea and that her brother had it. it took almost two years to get my hard-headed wife to get herself checked out and, of course, she has sleep apnea. she was given this machine to use with a mask to wear at night that makes her look like darth vader. it looks like one of those car vacuums with a long hose. i feel horrible for her. when i walk into the bedroom to go to sleep and she has the mask on i wonder how in the hell she can sleep in the thing. most of the time she can't keep it on all night and when she takes it off it sounds like the roof coming off of dorothy's house in "the wizard of oz". the apparatus makes all kind of funny noises at night while it is in operation. oh, and it makes her grind her teeth. she seems to go in streaks when it comes to wearing the thing. she will go a week or so without the thing on and she snores and she stops breathing and i shake her and she struggles for breath and on and on........when gets up to take a leak at night and finds me sleeping on the couch she knows it's time to put the mask back on. she gets mad about it. but she puts it back on. and the pattern repeats itself. i was at my father's house last week and arrived just in time to hear my old man and my stepmother bickering over the fact that he's not bothering to wear his sleep apnea mask. and the fact that he stops breathing when he doesn't. and that she isn't getting much sleep. and on and on and on.........