Sleep Center study led to better rest, for patient, partner

Panola Medical Center is a functional new name for our hospital in that it reflects the new owner’s emphasis on providing quality health care in the smaller, local rural hospitals that it specializes in operating.
Last summer I spent a couple of nights in its Sleep Center. Last week the hospital hosted in its cafeteria the weekly breakfast meeting of the Batesville Exchange Club. Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Center Director Stephanie Guckert and Sleep Center Director Gayle Lemmon were our speakers, with Gayle managing to get in a few words amid Stephanie’s constant commentary.
“You talk more than your mother,” someone accused.
“Yes, but I make sense!” said Stephanie, never at a loss for a comeback and quick to throw her lovely mother, Glenda Bailey, under the bus
My visits to the Sleep Center originated with our daughter’s New Orleans visit in spring, 2016. For years my wife had interrupted my sleep by waking me to tell me to stop snoring. I accused her of lying because I never heard it. But when Mary, who stayed upstairs during her visit, complained about my snoring while I was sleeping downstairs, I went looking for help.
That led to an overnight stay in the Sleep Center where an efficient respiratory therapist hitched me up with sensors from head to toe and put me to bed in nice surroundings. But for all those wires attached it was more like a motel room. Better than some I’ve stayed in. A night in 1995 at the London Lodge on Airline Drive in Metairie comes to mind, but that’s another story.
The study revealed that yes, I had sleep apnea that, among other things, means that I stopped breathing very often during my sleep, leaving me tired when I got up and at risk for heart problems and other undesirable outcomes, including snores measured in Richters instead of decibels.
This eventually led to a CPAP device that generates positive air pressure through a mask I wear over my nose and mouth. The positive air pressure keeps my airway from closing like it did before. The sleep study process also included a second overnight stay at the Sleep Center that was much the same as the first but I slept wearing a CPAP device to give the doctor a before and after comparison.
My wife no longer complains about my snoring and I wake more rested. There are many versions of the nose/mouth device but I stayed with the first one they gave me after trying briefly one that covered only my nostrils. Now, when I finish reading or whatever, I put the mask on and immediately fall asleep.
Stephanie asked me to share my experience at the Sleep Center with our readers, and now I have. Stephanie has a way of asking you to do something that makes you want to do it. That’s why she is also so successful with her patients in the Cardio-Pulmonary Rehab Center.
She learned it from her mother.