There are 40 million people in the U.S with sleep disorders. Roughly 14 million of these people have apnea. To treat all of these people there are about 30,000 registered proffessionals. To teach these proffessionals there are less than 20 schools nation wide. In Indiana there are no stand alone sleep schools. Due to the pt high demand expert instructors are few and far between. All of this compiled with the sink or swim attitude of the sleep industry make coming up in sleep through OJT a very difficult road to run.

Beforegetting into sleep I was a corporate bartender. Meaning I traveled around the country training bartenders and restaurant staff for new openings. it was a great gig! It however did not teach, or prepare me for anything that the medical industry was about to throw at me. I mean what do apnea and a Flirtini have in common really(other than they will both cause fragmented sleep). After over 20 years in the restaurant industry I was done. I took the first job offered to get me out of mixology 101. That job just happened to be a sleep job.

As I stated earlier OJT can be a tough road to haul. For the first 6 months of my job I pushed buttons. I was that tech that so many of you have complained about. I did not even truly understand what kind of epidemic i was dealing with until I found this site, and a few others. The members of this site, and binarysleep.com, were my first sleep mentors. I did have some other help along the way and am now working for a great group.

Now in looking back on my journey through sleep and getting ready to take my boards you can imagine my surprise in realizing that my greatest sleep education came from my 9 year old daughter Kylie. Kylie is very bright and witty normal girl. About a year ago she had soome personality issues that came to a big ugly head. She was having trouble with everyone she came in contact with, school, friends, and authorty figures. we all made up excuses. Everything from the break up of her mom and I to her own demanding schedule. her teachers were complaining because she was acting out. We tried everything we could to fix the problem. I was at the point of excepting that because I was a bad kid that I was destined to have a bad child. Then just before christmas of last year she fell asleep in my arms and began snoring. Even with my limited training I new this was not good. The next day i marched her into a sleep lab and hooked her up. My baby had an AHI of 8! After a trip to the ENT my daughter had her toncils and adnoids removed over christmas break. this was about a month before I found this site.

Now you would think that this would have been the end of this journey. that would be to easy. My daughter's personality problems actually got worse before they got better. At this point I began to really dig into my sleep education. I had to find out what was going on. I began to find evidence that my daughter was getting up in the middle of the night. Things out of place, the tv on. I set up a camera, and sure enough like clock work 3x a night. She was eating playing, video games you name it. All of this and making it back to sleep before anyone would notice. You see the the arousals from the apnea had become a learned response for her. By this time she had become a life support system for her mouth. In april of this year her mom and I were called to the school for a "conference". They informed us that they were thinking of holding her back due to her maturity level. As you can already tell this did not go over well with Kylie. I asked(begged) that we be given a chance to work with her. The school gave me that chance and opted for a re-evaluation in July of this year. this is when the fun really began. You see up to this point just telling my daughter she needed more sleep was not working. So I began to teach her sleep starting with apnea and the need to remove her toncils. I taught her sleep cycles, staging, and the importance of the sleep-wake cycle as it pertains to the biological clock. She learned sleep hygeine, and was allowed to redecorate her room.She became so involved in learning about sleep that at times I thought she might be able to do my job. We also limited things like tv(the disney channel is the devil). In return she was given an extra hour to play outside everyday. We came up with better punishments for bad behavoir. And we crossed our fingers and hoped that everyone else would see the changes that we were seeing.

So we are sitting in the conference room at school yesterday listening as Kylie's teacher and the school psychiatrist are explaning that the results of her apptitude, and psych test were off the charts. They explained to me that they had never seen such a dramatic change in a child in such a short time. At this point they asked me what the difference was. Before I could say anything Kylie explained the importance of getting a proper night's sleep. She explained REM vs NREM and the restoritive power of both. My 9 year old daughter explained apnea in a way that I would have never been able to in all of my training and pt experience. I am still having trouble putting it in her words now. I had tears in my eyes when she began to explain the importance of completing sleep cycles vs fragmented sleep. As a result of this Kylie will be starting this fall with her class and friends. As her grades were never part of the problem she will be allowed to participate in honors english and math. I have never been so proud in my life.

I am asked everyday "What is the best way to educate the public on sleep?" After spending 6 months teaching my child whom now will probably never have bad sleep again my answer is simple. TEACH THE CHILDREN! Thank you for listening to my sleep story.