I am Christian Roth and I live in San Jose, California.
Over the years, I've really struggled with getting a good night's sleep, so I'd sleep
eight to nine hours, but still feel terrible the next day. There was this fog or a cloud
over me.
I tried to do a lot of different techniques to, you know, make our bedroom more relaxing
for him to sleep in. Nothing really worked
So, it came to the point where, I stopped breathing when I sleep.
I would hear him snore, and then just all of a sudden, stop, and there would be no noise.
And then, probably a few seconds later, you'd hear this loud exhale. Just hearing him stop
breathing like that, really scared me.
Christian The next morning she said, "You need to do
something about this."
I went to Stanford for a consultation, and they immediately signed me up for a sleep
study.
The results weren't good. So, I had a very severe sleep apnea.
Severe sleep apnea means you stop breathing "X" amount of times per hour. So, in my case,
I stopped almost every minute.
In a younger gentleman with a higher blood pressure, sleep apnea is something that needs
to be investigated.
Patients with moderate to severe Obstruction Sleep Apnea have two to four times higher
chance of having a heart attack or a stroke and around five to seven times more chance
of having recurring car accidents because of attention failures.
So, I went in for a follow-up and they actually used this sophisticated camera to look inside
my throat; and it turned out that I have like very severe blockage.
Mr. Roth was someone who had bigger tonsils, deviated septum and hypertrophic turbinates.
For most adults we start with the CPAP. CPAP is the acronym for Continuous Positive Airway
Pressure. Basically, it is a device that you use a mask and it splints the airway open
so it stops obstructing during sleep.
Unfortunately, around half of the people, despite all best efforts, cannot use the machine.
I tried the CPAP machine for about four to five months. I was still unable to sleep through
the night.
That's when I saw that, given his age, his body mass index, his anatomic structure, he
would be a very good candidate for surgery.
Dr. Capasso was pretty confident that this would help me out, so the first thing he recommended
was to obviously, get the tonsils removed, and then clear up the deviated septum, also,
to enlarge my nostrils.
On surgery day, we were just waiting, waiting for him to come out, and he finally did. And
Dr. Capasso came and spoke to my mother-in-law and I right after. And, you know, the first
thing he said was, "When he wakes up, he's going to be in lots of pain." But he said,
you know, everything went really well.
The recovery wasn't too bad, actually.
After I got the splint out of my nostrils, it was just amazing and I was like, "Wow.
I didn't know I could breathe like this."
I thought the care at Stanford was topnotch. We know that they are one of the leading facilities
in Northern California, so I definitely wanted to take advantage of them. And they took the
time to explain everything that was going on. And they were confident that they could
beat this. So, that in turn, gave me confidence to follow through.
After the surgery, I had much more endurance; and so, it definitely played a factor in me
being able to go on long runs, or you know, play volley ball or soccer.
The first time I noticed something was different, I actually couldn't sleep because it was so
quiet in our room. And I remember just staring at Christian while he was sleeping to see
if he was still breathing, because he was so quiet. And, I would like, hold my hand
up to his nose just to check. And he was fine, and so, it was just amazing to me that it
was so quick. And so, I just knew that, you know, whatever Dr. Capasso did in that surgical
room was magic.
It didn't really sink in until two to three weeks after where I woke up in the morning,
I just felt incredible. It was like, "Did I just take sleeping drugs? What happened
here?" And like this is my new reality. This is amazing.