I'm not generally a fan of nagging as a marital strategy, but there are times when I make an exception. My husband's health is an exception. He is a victim of what I will call medical stupidity. He never wants to go to the doctor because it's probably not that bad anyway, so it's really just a waste of time. This is definitely a case of it takes one to know one, because examples of my own medical stupidity are legion. The most recent one was me not wanting to go to the ER even though I hurt my foot so badly I couldn't walk 50 ft without crying and wanted my husband to leave work so he could carry the baby up the stairs for me since I didn't think I could. However, this post is about my nagging him and not the other way around.
DH has been tired for at least 2 years now, and probably longer. He sleeps 8 hours and is still tired. This past year he hasn't had a single day where he felt rested. Not one. Given we have a crappy sleeping 1 year old, but I do 98% of the night parenting, and he is always more tired than me. This is not normal. My husband didn't think it was a big deal, probably because it's been that way for him for so long. So I nagged.
I nagged a lot. It was over months. I made him get blood tests. Normal-ish. I made him go see a therapist in case it was depression. Nope. Finally, I made him go get a sleep study. Bingo. The results came back as sleep apnea. He stops breathing on average 77 times an hour when he sleeps. This one was low on my list since DH doesn't snore. It turns out there's more than one kind of apnea and my husband has the non-snoring kind. We are now waiting on specialist appointments and a CPAP and all kinds of things.
The waiting is weird. In some ways knowing is scarier than not knowing because I worry when he sleeps now. Also, it's the Army and it's taking longer than I think it should to get appropriate follow up. On the other hand, I also feel vindicated. My instinct was right. Something really was wrong.
The good news is that I can stop nagging for a while and soon DH will be able to get a good night's sleep.
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