I am so glad I can offer some information! When I first went to my Sleep Dr it was a whole new world; no one I knew had it so I had to figure a lot of it out on my own.

I'm sorry, I was confusing in that post regarding sleep positions. Ppl w/Sleep Apnea often sleep on their backs (which increases the likelihood of the throat muscles collapsing in one's sleep), and snore---I was doing a lot of both. What I meant to say is my Dr has patients who sleep on their stomachs, don't snore, and still have Sleep Apnea. Essentially, there are general "qualifiers", but no definitive symptoms for all.

I kind of had the opposite thing with snoring. I never once heard myself snore, but woke my (sound-sleeping) boyfriend numerous times. I don't think you have to wake someone up with your snoring in order to check out a possible sleep problem. I know Mayoclinic and WebMd's sites have good info about this. Pre-diagnosis, I woke myself up three times not breathing, and it was terrifying. Ironically, when I woke my bf with my sleeping, he would record me so I could hear it later; what I heard was an unusual snore followed by a gargle-y, kind of hoarse breathing. That freaked me out, but my bf didn't think it was unusual (little secret: he does a lot of the same stuff in his sleep but won't check it out, ). When I first heard those recordings, my gut told me that wasn't normal. Lo and behold.

As far as never feeling rested, I've been like that most of my life. Ever since my teens, I've had sleep ranging from insomnia to laying in bed for hours before falling asleep, to sleeping 12 hours and waking up feeling like I never went to bed. It got to the point for me where I was so tired I almost hurt; it was like having mono all the time. That was when my P-doc was like, "Get that looked at, Now." The thing was, I had a lot of anxiety at that particular time, but no real depression (I've had severe depression on and off for yrs, so
I knew what that felt like)....I knew this lack of energy wasn't depression.

Admittedly, I am severely overweight, but I'd been overweight before and never felt this way. My Sleep Dr says it's hard to say whether the Sleep Apnea has contributed to the weight gain, or vice versa (though he said he has clients in perfect health that also have Sleep Apnea).

I told him about my sleep history, pre medications, etc., how even when I was in the best physical & mental shape of my life I had bouts of this same fatigue. He said, "Your entire history is textbook Sleep Apnea." So it's possible I've had this for many years and never known it.

I'm so glad you appreciate my posts. I hope I'm helping ppl with this info. After so long with energy issues/being tired, never did I think I had a sleep disorder. Crazy stuff.

I'll try to find a link to the machine I use so InsideOut can get a visual.