my employer at the time was OK as far as benefits go, though those benefits were being steadily eroded so there was some lameness.

but logistically, during a routine appointment, my primary care set me up with a referral to the sleep clinic. I contacted the clinic made an appointment for a virtual consult. a 15 minute conversation with that person set me up with an appointment to come in and pick up a gameboy-sized pack with a sort of harness and some attachments where the clinician explained how I wear it and hook it up before bed so it could monitor my movements, breathing, and pulse/ox via the finger. they gave tips on how to sleep with it on and there was a little book to follow. I think they only needed like 4-6 hours of me being asleep to make a diagnosis, so they said if I woke up and shit was unplugged it wasn’t a big deal. but I had to bring the pack back the next day and wait 10 minutes in the lobby for them to confirm it had enough recorded data, which it did. within a few days they gave me a diagnosis and another virtual appointment to discuss my severity (moderate) and treatment options. she wanted to start me on a machine and they set me up with an appointment to go into a DME shop who took my insurance and sent them my diagnosis/treatment settings. so I went in there and a super nice, gentle lady spent like an hour with me explaining how it worked and helped me pick out/try out different masks and shit based on what was important. everybody in this process confessed they also had apnea and confided they preferences for treatment. the DME lady got me all set up and talked about how the machine could be rented or purchased (this is where my insurance went shit because they negotiated away purchase to force rental, but if you can purchase or rent to own it’s so much better… I got lucky in that I changed employers and my next insurance company / employer (after phone calls from me) just covered it all and I stopped having to pay anything. union job lol. they ship me new stuff and consult about how things are going every few months, letting me know about all the no cost stuff I can get to try other masks or whatever.

anyway, after the initial consult/sleep test at home, and treatment consult, it’s actually been very chill. it sends my usage data and info to the clinic on its own via cellular network and they can make adjustments or whatever if needed. I adjusted to it immediately, though I didn’t think I would. theyl advice I got was to take it home and try it on just hanging out on the couch or whatever to get used to it while not trying to sleep. shit, 10 minutes later I almost fell asleep.

anyway, I started looking forward to going to sleep because it’s like actually restful and restorative.

so I had OK insurance that downgraded after a few months, then upgraded to good insurance about 8 months into treatment when I moved a thousand miles away to a new employer, which was a logistical pain in the ass at the time but as I was getting good sleep I had the energy and drive to stay after it.

It was… not great, even living here in Sфviёт Cдпдdд. So much for universal health care—lungs and brains are luxury organs, just like our teeth are luxury bones.

The referral to the sleep study was pretty straightforward, and didn’t cost me anything. They sent me home with a portable machine to wear attached to my face, and it recorded my breathing overnight. Then I went back to the clinic, they told me, “Yep, you definitely have obstructive sleep apnea.” And then they asked me to pay $2500 for the machine and mask (which is about triple what it’s actually worth at retail prices—and that’s certainly marked up substantially).

Mercifully, my partner and I were both working at the time, and we had pretty okay health insurance, so split between our plans, our “health and wellness spending accounts”, and putting the whole thing on a line of credit until they reimbursed us a month later, I was able to get my CPAP machine.

It’s failing now, since that was over a decade ago. I’m dreading my next doctor’s visit.