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June 3, 2005
Sleeplessness on the Prairies
Snoring husband causes spousal exasperation – at all hours
of the day.
SHARON MELNICER
Snoring strips, sinus remedies, herbal aromatics, throat sprays
... he's tried them all. Then there have been the more primitive
measures involving me: rolling him from side to side like a fire
log, jabbing him sharply in the ribs while hissing threats to his
life, clanging on pots with soup ladles and wooden spoons, pinching
his earlobes, giving him noogies while hissing threats to his life,
tickling him ... no good, all of them, no good!
Nothing has worked. And you realize by now, I'm not talking ordinary
snoring here. I'm talking louder snoring than Freddy's chainsaw
in the Massacre movies, I'm talking volume that can drown
out an aria by Pavarotti and all the other tenors, I'm talking about
snoring that makes "The War of 1812 Overture" sound like
a lullaby. If Black and Decker wanted an ongoing, nocturnal advertisement
for their buzzsaw, all they'd have to do is stamp their logo on
my husband's butt.
I've talked to other wives who practise the same nightly ritual
(all of us have dark circles under our eyes and walk round-shouldered,
with a shuffle) and there are enough of us, by my count, to make
up 20 support groups in south Winnipeg alone. The snorts, the rumbles,
the honks, the horks, the whistles, the sighs, the lip-flapping
vibratos that shake and rock the bed in, believe me, the most asexual
way you can imagine. It's reminiscient of Linda Blair in The
Exorcist. All those snorers' wives I've talked to, whose shoulders
I've cried upon, know that I am not exaggerating. They've shared
their stories of exhaustion and depression with me, as I have with
them. They, too, are among the countless shuffling, sleep-deprived,
sofa-sleeping zombies of this country.
"How can I be snoring if I'm not even sleeping? Tell me that!"
my husband says. I move the down-filled pillow a little closer to
his face where I fantasize about firmly placing it as soon as he
goes to sleep. Meanwhile, he is defiant, challenging. He sports
a little George Bush smirk and his chin precedes the rest of his
face by four or five inches. Although he is lying in bed, his hands
are sitting on his hips. He repeats it. "I can't be snoring,
can I, if I'm not even asleep? Use your head – come on now,
be reasonable. Besides, I didn't hear a thing."
This is the nuclear missile of all questions. It promises to make
me explode faster than a bug can blink. I know if I reply, we will
need hundreds of years of expensive couples therapy, despite the
fact that this man has been my husband for 35 years and has enthusiastically
snored for most of them.
Once again, I stuff my feet into my worn terry cloth slippers, don
my nearly bald chenille housecoat, pull my lumpy (from pounding)
stress-soaked pillow from my side of the bed and head downstairs
to the living room. Pushing Theo, my snoozing marmalade tabby, off
the throw on the back of the couch, I hunker down for the night,
draping it over myself as a way to keep warm. I fall into a coma-like
sleep, knowing I will have to be up in a couple of hours. The pair
of industrial-strength earplugs I've begged from the metal shops
teacher, a colleague of mine at the vocational school where I teach,
sadly doesn't filter out the rumbles upstairs, even though my husband
is an insomniac and must be making these noises while still awake.
It's a miracle!
Finally, I convince my husband that his snoring is not the illusion
he claims it to be. In short order, he is an overnight guest of
Dr. Meir Kryger at St. Boniface Hospital's sleep lab where, after
being hooked up to myriad monitors and videotaped all night, the
world-reknowned sleep doc concludes he has sleep apnea‚ a condition
that deprives him of oxygen while he is asleep. In fact, when the
snoring stops for a minute or two, it actually means he has stopped
breathing.
My nose-singing hubby is given a machine called a C-PAP (continuous
positive airway pressure) that looks like a Dirt Devil hooked up
to a goalie's mask. It makes him look a lot like Hannibal Lecter.
When we travel, customs officials invariably peer, narrow-eyed,
into the black suitcase containing the machine and supiciously ask
what it is. That my husband was born in Uzbekistan doesn't help
either. That's usually when the sniffer-dog shows up.
The C-PAP is neither pretty nor sexy, but hot damn, it works! Turn
it on, put the mask in place – and the snoring stops! The machine
makes no more noise than a quiet fan on a hot, summer night. I'm
not forced to make anymore nocturnal visits to the couch (well,
unless it's for one of those non-snoring reasons); we both get to
sleep and snuggle through the night in the same bed and the cat
gets the throw, the sofa and the living room all to himself.
Sharon Melnicer is a Jewish writer, artist and teacher
in Winnipeg.
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