Do Alexs dream of sleepless sheep?

Here's how it all began:

Many years ago, there was a man (my father) and a woman (my mother) and they had me. Fast forward to later, and my father had pretty severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). Apnea, meaning without oxygen/breathing, along with hypopnea, or low oxygen (I shouldn't have to explain this, you should know these etymological prefixes), are events that can occur while sleeping. Your body, for a period of time, will have reduced to no oxygen flow to your brain and other organs.

Now, sleep is pretty important, and so is breathing, and neither of those things happen as much as they should when you have OSA. Your body actually kinda spazzes out when you have an event, and releases hormones and stuff to arouse (hey hey!) you, similar to flight and fight mechanisms. So, if sleep was like the movie Inception (the first of many Inception analogies I'm sure), every time you start to get to a lower stage of sleep and have an event, your body wakes up. I don't usually become conscious, but my body is no longer sleeping for a moment, if that makes sense. So, what they call sleep architecture, or the percentages of sleep in different stages required for productive sleep time, gets destroyed like Tokyo with Godzilla.

Now, that's the problem. You may ask yourself ('self??'), what is to be done? Well, the best way in terms of preventing any episodes is to otomy your trachea, straight up hole in the throat. But, that isn't really a common response, unless its seriously a life-threatening, you are dying type of thing.

Another first response for most people is to stop being super fat. Most patients with OSA are obese and they have such a preponderance of soft tissue that they stop breathing. Losing weight is a very effective form of treatment for the obese. Fortunately, that isn't my problem.

Most people just use a CPAP, aka a continuous positive air pressure device. That is a mask that basically blows room air down your nose while you sleep. It creates a vortex in your airway that prevents it from collapsing and voila, you breath better. However, it sucks, figuratively. The mask is really irritating, you have to wear it for the rest of your life, e v e r y   s i n g l e   n i g h t. Total turn on, huh?

One solution I was using for a while was an oral appliance that pulls your lower jaw forward. That was technically effective for me, which is why I determined the surgery would be a good fit. It's a clear plastic retainer that you put over both lower and upper teeth with bands that pull the lower teeth forward, and it hurt like the dickens, reminiscent of charles. I'd wake up with loose teeth and a messed up bite, and it just didn't seem like a good permanent treatment.

However, it showed me that opening my airway a bit was effective in stopping my OSA. So, the next step was just to make it permanent, and that was through an MMA (maxillomandibular advancement).