ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601090003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
MEMO: NOTE: Also ran in January 18, 1996 Neighbors.
Imagine what it would be like to be tired all the time.
Not just fatigued, not merely in the mood for a little nap, but so utterly bone-weary that simple tasks like grocery shopping leave you prostrated. You're too tired to concentrate on your job. You're afraid you'll fall asleep on the drive home from work.
Even worse, imagine that a night's sleep does no good whatever. You go to bed and apparently go to sleep, but eight hours later you wake not merely unrested but thoroughly exhausted. For you, sleep has lost its restorative powers.
This is the world of people who suffer obstructive sleep apnea. It's also the world of respiratory therapy technician and somnographic technologist Gloria Donahue, who helps sleep apnea victims again know what it means to get a good night's rest.
"Sleep patients are misunderstood people," said Donahue, who works at Pulaski Community Hospital and other hospitals in the New River Valley. She also commutes during the week to work in a hospital in Alabama.
"They're frequently depressed," she said of her patients, "but it's a kind of depression that's not brought on by anything except deprived sleep. Untreated sleep deprivation causes depression and mood swings, and [patients] get tagged as lazy and unmotivated. It gets to be a way of life and they live with it, but it's no kind of life. When you get home, you fall asleep in front of the TV - when you've got a day off, you're too tired to enjoy it."
Those with apnea actually stop breathing at night, for 30 seconds, a minute or even longer. There can be hundreds of apnea incidents in a single night, each one bringing the victim to the threshold of consciousness and depriving him of the crucial deep sleep necessary for real rest.
The culprit is excessive tissue in the back of the throat, frequently signaled by severe snoring and exacerbated by excess weight. The onset of the condition is insidiously gradual, proceeding in such tiny increments that apnea victims are often hard-pressed to pinpoint the precise beginning of their pervasive weariness.
It's not a minor health problem. In over a decade of running overnight sleep studies on suspected apnea victims, Donahue has seen stroke, seizures, heart failure, kidney failure and mental retardation caused by untreated sleep apnea. In one case, a 10-year-old boy died of the disorder.
The most common conservative treatment of sleep apnea is the CPAP - continuous positive airway pressure - machine, a small, quiet air compressor with a nasal mask that apnea victims wear at night. The machine splints open previously blocked breathing passages with compressed air, allowing the wearer uninterrupted rest.
Ironically, Donahue's own days and nights are reversed. In order to help others get a decent night's sleep, she works all night and sleeps in the day.
She works with Cam McLaughlin, a Blacksburg registered respiratory therapist, in MEDIAS (which is pronounced meh-DYE-us and stands for Medical Diagnostic Services), which contracts sleep studies with area hospitals. If the patient's insurance provides for it, she conducts the sleep study in the sufferer's own bedroom, for most people a more sleep-friendly environment than a hospital room.
Nowadays her New River Valley work is conducted on weekends. Midweeks she is helping to establish a sleep lab at Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center in Anniston, a weekly commute that adds up to a 1,045-mile round trip.
Scarce free time for Donahue, who lives in Roanoke, is divided between her grandchildren and her hobby - motorcycles.
Donahue's routine at Pulaski General Hospital is typical of her work elsewhere. She shows up at 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. to check out her equipment and computer monitoring devices. Patients, who are referred by their physicians, show up a little before their normal bedtime, and most are convinced they'll never be able to get any sleep wired up to monitors in a hospital room.
``They come in here saying, `Well, this is going to be a lost cause. It's just a waste of time,''' chuckled Donahue. "But usually it's not long before they're asleep."
Before she turns the lights out, Donahue attaches monitor wires to the patient that measure brain wave activity, heart rate, blood oxygen level, leg muscle spasms and breathing rate. If she detects sleep apnea on the first visit and the patient and physician decide on CPAP treatment, a second visit is necessary to try out the machine and determine the minimum air pressure necessary to splint open the sufferer's breathing passages.
"It's a quiet time," Donahue said of her long nights with sleepers.
"There's the hum of the equipment, the patient's heartbeat, and the breathing and snoring [relayed by microphone to Donahue's sleep command center], and that's it. Not like during the daytime, with hall traffic and the PA system."
Black leather is a big change from hospital greens, but that's what Donahue wears when she and her husband, Howard, ride their Suzuki motorcycle.
"We're looking at a Harley, and when we get it we're going to do a cross-country tour," said Donahue, who concedes that she will have to change her workaholic ways to accommodate a long trip.
In the meantime, business is booming. MEDIAS is expanding from its New River Valley base to as far east as Charlottesville and as far west as Bristol. "There are still areas where sleep deprivation is underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed," Donahue said. "I love my work. It's fascinating."
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: When she's not busy helping others with their sleepby CNBdisorders, respirator therapy technician and somnographic
technologist Gloria Donahue enjoys motorcycle riding with her
husband, Howard. color ROGER HART/Staff