Sleep Hell Part 3 (The Final Chapter. Maybe....)

In order to get my medical card when I took my physical back in August 2016, I had to have a letter from my doctor stating that the machine is successfully correcting my sleep apnea condition.

 

Also be aware some of the mega's will tell they want a printout for usage every 90 days, or randomly.

 

there are no, none, nada, zero federal or state requirements for sleep studies or anything regarding sleep apnea. That's purely a company / concentra scam. Go ahead and read the DOT regulations for a DOT physical, there' exactly one reference to sleep apnea (in 260 pages) and no guidelines for it to cause you to fail or change a DOT physical.

OP, go find another doctor/job. and remember,when you fill out the stupid questionnaire, the answer is always NO.

 

I was thinking if you pull into a place like Jersey City you will not be sleeping. Not normally.

This industry has put a thumb on drivers about CPAP. Even back when I was around in 2001. Drivers were having to get permission to install inverters so that they can run CPAP in the bunk back then.

If you sleep on a mountain it's going to be different than sleeping on the sea the altitude will decide how much oxygen you have in your blood. IF that does complicate things already.

Forget the medicines. You have had several labs and they all come out roughly the same. Sounds like you have to put up some money for a quality CPAP unit. I would. Insurance does not cover everything and never will. Oh... by the way if you are involved with medicare and have a second medical insurance, make sure you never give the bills to medicare first because that is a form of fraud. The second medical insurance must always be primary and medicare gets whats left and you will get whats left.

If you cannot rest enough after 8 hours to drive 11 at a time then I suggest you do not be in trucking. It's really demanding as you know and you have to be sharp and able to deal with whatever happens when it does. Driving sleepy is worse than driving drunk. I should know all about that.

Trucking is still freedom, but you have less and less oppertunity for that these days as the last hold outs are hunted to extinction.

 

i mean, some companies demand that you use a scam ridden DOT physical place like concentra that magically made sleep apnea a big deal even though it's not required. And some companies don't, they just want a DOT physical.

 

Just tell her you want the best results possible so you can use CPAP and a auto CPAP is also a more capable machine. You or she can set it for the number they got in the sleep lab. If your not getting good numbers from that setting. You and she has the option to turn on automatic mode and you might get better results. It would be better for compliance since the sleep study was kinda short because you could not sleep comfortably.

See the old CPAP machine did not have automatic option. So people had to rely on sleep study results. If you got no so good sleep study your CPAP results would not be as good as they could. Someone could or would go back for another sleep study trying to sleep long to get better pressure settings. Today you can get auto set/ automatic and the CPAP will adjust for you. Assuming it works good you wouldn't need to go back for another sleep study if their number are off a little. It basically give you and you doc more options for compliance. That what you want, so ask doctor if she will write prescription for autoset. Then they can try the numbers from the sleep lab first. Then if needed they can run it in auto mode. It more options to have so you are successful with CPAP.