Doesn’t Matter How You Got Here, You Can’t Swim Home

This is your first stop on the Isle, a sort of educational loading-zone. Here’s where you’ll learn how to talk about your own SLEEP experience, to come up with your own set of sleep-wake complaints.

You’ll also learn some of the language of the Isle, as we explore the different flavors of Sleep Apnea (who knew? there are two!—Obstructive and Central!), and we’ll take a tour of all the moving parts of these guys.

There are more than a few.

Legend has it, the Isle will only let you leave the Bay of Narrative after you’ve learnt what you’ve come there to learn.

The Isle is magic like that.

After you’ve learnt what you’ve needed to learn in the Bay of Narrative, you’ll magically find your way to the Five Reasons Monument (and Coffee Hut).

The Monument is large, unwieldy, and irrefutable. Sphinx-like, its towering presence reminds us that there are FIVE REASONS to treat Sleep Apnea: RISK, SNORING, SLEEP, WAKE, and COMORBIDITIES.

These FIVE REASONS will never change. The Monument is to be regarded as a permanent structure.

Though it’s wise to pay respect to the immutability of the FIVE REASONS paradigm, the real action (for you) happens at the Coffee Hut. That’s where good conversation takes place.

People feel comfortable at the Coffee Hut.

Over pie and coffee, we’ll pick apart these reasons carefully, putting them in context with everything you learned during your time wandering around the Bay of Narrative.

See, you’ll need to have this conversation firmly in mind before you can make it across the River.

The River of Decision.

After your Coffee Hut discussion, you have an important Decision to make.

Do the REASONS you’ve come up with at the Coffee Hut justify fording a deep and turbulent river?

The legendary River of Decision.

If the answer is YES, you’ve got another Decision to make:

How are you going to get across?

Before embarking, you’ll set some goals (based, of course, on the Five Reasons discussion you had, whilst enjoying pie and coffee at the Coffee Hut).

You’ll then take careful stock of the different modes of transport: Positive Airway Pressure Therapy, Oral Appliance Therapy, Surgical Approaches, Hypoglossal Nerve Stimulation Therapy, Airway-Centered Dentistry, Breathing Rehabilitation Exercises, Positional Therapy, Supplemental Oxygen Therapy, Myofunctional Therapy, “Singing For Snorers”—WHEW! Lots of boats to choose from.

Wonder if they’re all sea-worthy? How do you decide which is best? Which strategy is most likely to achieve the goals that are most important for you?

Empowered Sleep Apnea gives you the practical knowledge you need!

It’s not the crossing, it’s the landing.

The River of Decision defies the usual boundaries of physics and logic, so it’s never clear where you’re going to end up on the Isle, after you cross. Though everybody hopes for an easy deliverance to Pleasant Dreams Beach, the journey for some can be pretty bumpy.

We won’t let you walk around in the thorny brush without guidance. Here’s where we’ll take a deep tour into Complications and Competing Diagnoses, which are EVERYWHERE in these parts. We’ll explore the many faces of Pressure Toxicity. We’ll trek into the rocky ground of Treatment Emergent Central Sleep Apnea. We’ll wade into the Willis-Ekbom Wilderness. We’ll traverse the Mire of Excessive Sleepiness, and we’ll take a deep dive into the Badlands of Insomnia.

As we get our bearings in this strange landscape, we’ll dig into some basic sleep science, taking a look “under the hood” to see how sleep and wake actually WORK.

We’ll even discover a trusted Isle artifact known as the Circadian-Rhythmo-Wheel, which is a really nifty Decoder-Ring-Type-Gizmo that will help you understand your OWN circadian rhythm!

All of this will form the foundation for you to understand a powerful tool called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi). The skills you learn here will help you navigate your way out of the Insomnia Badlands.

Navigation in Treated Territory can be difficult, because it’s likely that there will be several elements contributing to the Sleep Wake Complaints you discovered during your time at the Bay of Narrative.

Next-level orienteering requires an elevated viewpoint.

Here on the Isle, the best spot to gain your bearings is Five Finger Approach Mountain. You’ll tour this geological oddity to gain insight into your own experience, evaluating your own history for clues of Circadian Misalignment, Pharmacologic Influences, Medical Influences, Psychosocial & Psychiatric Influences, and Primary SLEEP Diagnoses.

Everybody on the Isle hopes that they’ll end up here, at Happy Z’s Sheep Counting Ranch, located on the pristine shoreline of Pleasant Dreams Beach. It’s really great, there, and they serve good Gumbo.

Everybody wants to come here, for sure, but too many poor souls get lost along the way.

Lost in the vast territory of Complications and Competing diagnoses. Some can never find their way, and they live in wild parts of Treated Territory forever.

Some just give up, abandoning all hope, and go back to Untreated Territory, to mope and throw rocks at the medical system.

Good thing we made you a Map.