Not sure how much help I'll be, but I've had sleep apnea (and epilepsy) for many
years as evidenced by my constant snoring. Although I've had the overnight sleep
test for epilepsy, I never have had one for sleep disorders, but I have had a
recording pulse oximeter test. When I was in the hospital a few years ago, the
pulmonologist lectured me about drinking any beer and described how that caused
the mucous tissues to relax and ... cause additional snoring. Snoring was caused
mainly, though, by sleeping on your back or similar position with the mouth
turned upwards.

So in any case, sleeping on the back was equated to causing snoring=sleep apnea
in one form. Wishing to avoid using CPAP at all costs, I trained myself to sleep
on my side and the snoring ended. There may still be a little apnea and I think
it could be what causes what I think are sleep seizures that leave parts of my
body sore, but it would take a sleep test to find out for sure.

Anyhow, I did a lot of research into CPAP and all at that time and have friends
and acquaintances who use CPAP. There are CPAP sleep apnea support newsgroups
that you might wish to follow and I learned a number of things. One is to never
let them con you into mouth & throat surgery. It will mess you up permanently in
spite of claims. Another is to use Auto-PAP equipment so that you don't need
periodic hospital stays to be re-titrated. For dry nasal tissues, never ever use
Vaseline or similar petrolatum products as they will get into the lungs and
cause incurable chemical pneumonia. Just use pure virgin olive oil and apply
with Q-Tips instead of the costly commercial remedies that don't work as well.

Hope that's of a little help to you.

Hi Mike,

   My husband has sleep apnea and epilepsy as well.  The doctor told him he
needed to get the sleep apnea under control because when you stop breathing
during sleep, you're depriving your brain of oxygen and possibly bringing on
night seizures.  Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night on
the floor from a night seizure.  He tried different variations of the CPAP
and found he couldn't handle it.  He found himself awake without it on.
Apparently it was bothering him so much, he would pull it off in his sleep.
He also tried different pressures and the nasal pillows, which didn't help.
Now, he uses Breathe Rite strips to keep his airway passages open and sprays
with Afrin (no drip) formula at night only.  He tried the surgery where they
remove the uvula and scrape some of the skin from the back of the roof off
his mouth(the space between the back of the roof of his mouth and his tongue
was extremely limited).  I believe it's called the PPP(palatopharyngoplasty)
surgery and the septonasal surgery.  Neither helped.  Everybody reacts
differently to different things. You may do well with the CPAP.

   He gets his seizures under control for a few months and then we end up
back at square one.  He has tried almost everything out there.  He's not too
crazy about the epilepsy surgery.  He went in for a video EEG to see if they
could localize his seizures and the hospital lost all of the data.  The
doctor told him he was glad he looked at the monitoring every morning, so he
has a general idea of where they're coming from.  He told my husband when
he's ready and when our insurance company is willing he would do the video
EEG with an MRI or a PET scan again to see if he could pinpoint them
exactly.  If he's having localized and generalized, it wouldn't do any good
to have the surgery.  He just had a TIA a couple of weeks ago and the report
showed "spots" on the right and left temporal lobe.

   I'm new here, so if I have misspoke or have done something that's
inappropriate, please let me know.

Valerie