From Driver Skip..Adventures in sleep apnea

ADVENTURES IN SLEEP APNEA

Let it start off and explain that, Yes, I am a candidate for a sleep apnea test. No rules are in place from the CVSA, or any governing bodies as to just who needs this, but concentra and a bunch of other groups have used a section of our rules about asma, copd and empazema, to branch out into a new line of income producing rules.... http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/391.41

“(5) Has no established medical history or clinical diagnosis of a respiratory dysfunction likely to interfere with his/her ability to control and drive a commercial motor vehicle safely; “.

Just where does it say there is anything, having to do with SLEEP? No where. Now, I can understand how sleep apnea may interrupt my periods of REM sleep, but I'm getting way ahead of myself...

On to the adventure I had getting tested:

I was informed by a Concentra Doctor that I had a 3 month card(medical)and had to get the test, in May, this year. I don't know about anyone else, but for the next 3 months, movers are so busy we don't have time for this kind of stuff until the season slacks off, and July hit, I realized we may not have enough time(depending on some requirements, different doctors have made some drivers give them 2 months of CPAP data from an sd card, before they could go back to work),and dead headed home in July to get this done...I started the research, no sleep clinic would give me the test without a prescription. So- I called the same doctor who told me to get the test. Her response was ”we don't do that”?????WHAT? She told me to go to my family doctor, I told her I did not have one and depended on Doc in a box like her, to get things done...One more time she said NO! At this point, I told her she would be hearing from my Lawyer, and she backed up and agreed to look at the forms I had form the sleep clinic....I e-mailed them over and started calling all kinds of other doctors(no faith in those folks now, at all) and found one within a half an hour who would order it without even seeing me...

Then on to the test....Friday, Saturday and Sunday night(at home)I slept wired to a monitor, it reported wirelessly to a company in Delaware, and I got my results by 10 am Monday...Funny thing is, I get a call from Concentra, telling me(7 days, after I called them, two weeks into this crap)to stop by and get the prescription for the test...I should have gone off on her, but, I calmly told here she was 7 days late, the test was done, and she had by her dragging her ass cost me $10,000 worth of income(like these folks care???)and I'd be seeing her in 2 hours....

Two hours later I hand her the test results and she asked me where the ordering doctors findings were(?????).I had to explain to her she was the ordering doctor....Her next statement blew me out of the water, I don't know how to read these things......DAMN? Funny thing is, I had spent the last 14 days doing research on what this was about, and told her I understood every bit of it....She then pointed to a graph and asked what it was.....I told her it was oxygen saturation levels during a period of sleep apnea...OH-So you have sleep apnea? NAW,I told here to look at the lower right sections of each nights page, the number there was episodes per hour of sleep apnea....She says again, SO-you have sleep apnea? NAW, if you will add those 3 numbers up an divide by 3 you'll get 7.2 episodes of sleep apnea per hour....Oh-so you have sleep apnea? NAW! Anything less than 15 is untreatable, minimal. I get my 2 year card right? She then says, where did you get those numbers from? I turned my Ipad around(thank you mobile mover, without you I'd still be on my laptop)and said The Mayo Clinic's web page, here it is.....Needless to say,9 months is all I got and I'm headed to a different doctor next time....

Tomorrow's post- the second part is pure SATIRE!

(for those of you in DC, Satire: the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.)

synonyms:

mockery, ridicule, derision, scorn, caricature;