How leaving the Navy may have actually saved my life

All right, now anyone who knows me and sees the title would probably be thinking "fucking let it go man! We get it, the Navy sucked.  You got out."  Yes, I was disgruntled and bitter at the end, but this is about how I found out about a health issue that I most likely wouldn't had discovered had I stayed in the Navy.

A little background: the advice I got when I was getting out was to swing by medical and make sure you get everything checked out so it goes into your record while you're still in the service so it's documented.  Something about being easier to get treated for conditions at the VA and what not.  I'm still not 100% sure why, but better safe than sorry, right?  Anyway, cut to the chase, I read this men's health article about Sleep Apnea.  It's pretty long, so you shouldn't read it, but a couple of lines really stood out to me:

I guess I do have a few symptoms of sleep apnea. Sometimes, for instance, I wake up marinated in sweat, my head pounding as if I had bounced it on cement.

Never had the head pounding, but I've woken up drenched in sweat with no idea why.  Turns out, when you stop breathing in your sleep it's quite a fucking workout for your heart and thus your body sweats.  Pretty scary shit.  This other one was more frightening:

Tom Zehmisch is a big part of why I'm being tested. Five years ago at a national swim meet, I shared a room with Tom, a lean and superbly fit triathlete. Tom had the body type that you could see gracing the cover of this magazine—the diametrical opposite of what doctors have dubbed the Pickwickian syndrome.

Four months after the meet, Tom died of a heart attack during the biking leg of a triathlon. He was 46.

I know this is anecdotal and I shouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction to it, but the fact is, being active and fit doesn't make you immune to something like a heart attack.  That's scary as fuck.  To make matters worse, I was still lazy - I figured I'd just sleep on my side to prevent myself from snoring.  It wasn't until someone who had already gotten out told me all you have to do is request a referral at medical on base and you could get a sleep study conducted at a lab in town and of course it's all covered while you're active duty.  Needless to say, I went and got checked out.

Moral of the story is that I'm glad I did.  I was prescribed a CPAP - something I've been using ever since the diagnosis.  I fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and am generally more refreshed than before I was using it.

To recap, even though I look like this:

I was sleeping like this:

So if someone tells you that you snore like a motherfucker in your sleep, might not be a bad idea to get it checked out.