The big snore

Snoring at its most tolerable level can sound like anything from someone gently puffing tobacco from a pipe to the whistling of a kettle just before boiling point.  On the other hand, at its most infuriating, it can sound like a steam shovel, a runaway freight train, or a dying cow that simply refuses to expire.

 For most of us, snoring is a bitter part of life. Either you snore, your bed partner snores, or you’ve been rudely awakened by a loud snore at sometime or another. Maybe every day. Okay, allow yourself only five minutes here for a pity party.  Now, moving on…

 Snoring happened to be the topic at the birthday party of Mayo Rocha recently and at the dinner table all ears were on the head of the household, former Ambassador John Rocha, whose regal presence at 72 years of age still commands much respect and admiration. He belatedly found out after a literal “rude awakening” that his wife and two daughters had been having serious concerns about his snoring. 

 He narrated with his characteristic charm, “One night I was sleeping and then for some reason I woke up and I saw four heads looking down at me. I was startled naturally; I didn’t know what was going on, what they were looking at, or why they were there. I mean, who would want to watch me sleep? What is their business watching me sleep? Then I realized the three heads belonged to women: my wife and two daughters, the other one was male — the son of my doctor who is also a doctor.  When I woke up they all went downstairs. So I followed and I saw them in the library having a conference. Saying “choo choo choo choo” among themselves — so serious, in a group like this (he demonstrated how they were huddled). So I crept in slowly and said, ‘Waaah!?’ I’m not dying; they thought I was dying.”

 Mayo, his daughter, picked it up from here and continued. “Well, we were worried because Mom said that his snoring had been getting worse. So we observed and, really, he sounds like he’s choking and we were scared that he would just, you know, stop breathing or die. His heart might stop or something. If you see and hear him, it’s really scary so that night we called our young doctor friend who lives in this village, too. He came at around 11 p.m. and we all watched Papa snore. There he was in bed, making ‘Hurrrck, hurrrck, hurrrck’ sounds.”

 Someone at the table asked, “So what happened?”

 Tito Johnny piped up, “Nothing! See? I’m still here; I still snore.”

 This, for most, is an all-too-familiar scenario: the snorer, peacefully in dreamland, totally oblivious to the harassed bedmate marinating in prolonged agony over the noise and inability to sleep, busy contemplating the best way to murder the snorer — by suffocating him with a pillow or by pinching his nostrils tight — just so he or she can get a few minutes of uninterrupted shuteye — never mind the consequences. A few years in jail sounds like a stroll on the beach when it’s 2 a.m. and one hasn’t had a minute of sleep and must be ready for a 7 a.m. meeting with the bosses.

 I should know. Both my brothers snore like the choked-up muffler of a car in the throes of death. On vacation in Lake Tahoe once when we were much younger, we had rented a log cabin that had a loft. The girls were given proper bedrooms and the boys were relegated to the loft.  One male cousin took to the sofa in front of the fireplace.  

We neglected to consider two things: first, that the absence of walls surrounding the loft would let their snores unleash maddening echoes that would bounce off the logs like crazy; and second, that my cousin snores even louder than my two brothers.

 So, every night of that one week in Tahoe, we had a symphony of choking, gurgling, sputtering, groaning, moaning, puffing, whimpering, hacking, whooping, keening and even clucking men to drive us to the brink of insanity. 

The worst night of all was when my cousin, who is the loudest snorer the world has ever heard (trust me on this one) fell off the sofa where he was sleeping because the violent sound of his very own snore shook him awake. Out of the blue and into the dead of night came was this huge  Kablog! We all rushed out of our rooms toward the origin of the noise and there we saw our cousin, on a heap on the floor saying, “Ano yon?  Ano yon?” 

Someone said, “That was you! Your own snore got you!” And so back to bed we trudged to lie down for a couple more hours, still unable to sleep, listening to the jagged symphony of snorers.

 Snoring — or what 19th-century English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray called “the gentle, unromantic music of the nose” — is what is medically known as “sleep apnea,” a cessation of breathing during sleep according to the website WebMD. It says that people snore “because our airways narrow in sleep, creating resistance in the passageways that connect our nose and mouth to the lungs. The narrower the tube, the greater amount of pressure needed to establish enough flow. The fatter we are — and in particular, the thicker our necks — the more pressure there is on the airways, and the more they tend to collapse as we sleep.”

 Luckily, there is an effective therapy for sleep apnea. Unluckily, it is a rather unsightly apparatus that makes the wearer look like a brain-damaged hospital patient — much like Hannibal Lecter in the movie Silence of the Lambs.  It is called CPAP for continuous positive airway pressure, and it consists of an air hose attached to a mask that’s fastened around the head and blows air through the nose. This device was introduced in 1981 and remains the standard care for treating snoring problems.

Dr. Nancy Collop, a pulmonologist and director of the sleep clinic at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore says, “I can almost guarantee that CPAP will cure almost anybody with sleep apnea — if they wear it.”

Improvements of this sleep apnea machine have made the generator smaller and quieter, able to vary the air pressure depending on the patient’s breathing patterns, and able to humidify the air to prevent dehydration in the airway. Currently, the device is the size of half a loaf of bread and can easily be taken on trips.

In the 1990s a snoring surgery that involved “lasering off” bits of flesh from the soft palate of the mouth was popular. It involved cutting away part of the soft palate and the uvula — the fleshy appendage at the back of the throat that vibrates noisily when the tongue falls against it during sleep. But this turned out largely to be a disaster according to WebMD because, “It doesn’t necessarily unblock your breathing. You decrease snoring sounds but airflow obstruction may still be present.”

In 1971, snoring was declared legal grounds for divorce in the United States. A woman was no longer obliged to stay tied to a man who deprived her of sleep because of his snoring. 

I researched to find out what women actually have to say about their snoring partners and what they are predisposed to doing to remedy the problem. Here are some of their answers as reported in the article “What If You love Someone But Their Snoring Is Driving You Crazy?” on the website experienceproject.com.

Woman One said: “Buy earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones.”

Woman Two: “Stick a laundry pin on their nose.”

Woman Three: “Snore even louder than them.”

Woman Four: “Sleep in another room.”

Woman Five: “Sleep with somebody else.”

Woman Six: “Cut their head off.”

The exception would be a very close friend of mine, who happens to be totally smitten with her partner, who snores like a dying cow. She says, “Sure, he snores — it’s more like three men snoring simultaneously, really! But I snore, too. And I’m so used to the sound of his snoring that I can’t sleep as soundly when he’s not around. I mean, when he starts to snore it’s a signal that he is peaceful and that, in turn, gives me peace of mind so I sleep better. When we go to bed, I snuggle really close to him — in his armpit to be exact — and his warmth makes me feel cozy so I’m able to relax. When his snoring starts, that’s when I drift off to sleep. It’s like this drone that I look for, which assures me that all is right with the world.”

There you have it. What sounds like a dying cow to some can be a lullaby to others.

* * *

Thank you for your letters. You may reach me cecilelilles@yahoo.com