Apnea vs. Kim,… apnea wins.

I am really hard to keep a positive spin on things, but starting almost every day with negativity is derailing me completely.  I feel like I am fighting a battle with the husband that has no hope of a reasonable conclusion.  Over the last few years, he has become increasingly violent in his sleep.  I spend most nights listening to him yell at me, and basically beat the crap out of me.  He is sound asleep and I know it, but it doesn’t make it any better when I get zero sleep and I feel like I have been run over by a truck every day.  To top it off, because he isn’t getting true, restful sleep, it takes forever to get him out of bed.  Because of that I have to get up even earlier, after getting no sleep myself, to get him up for work and that just adds to the negative resentment I feel about it.  Months ago, he was diagnosed with sleep apnea and given a CPAP machine.  When he wears it, things are completely different.  He is calm, he sleeps, he isn’t violent, and getting him up in the morning is at least a little easier.  The problem is getting him to wear the damn thing through the night, or at all.  I realize it isn’t the most comfortable, but neither is getting the crap beaten out of you every night.  I also know it takes time to get used to, time for your body to adjust to it.  And therein lies the problem.  He won’t give it a real chance and the excuses are endless.  Those excuses make me even more resentful because I feel like he is choosing his comfort over mine, despite the fact that the machine is for his health as well.

Even when he does wear it, he takes it off during the night and the change is almost immediate.  But he makes every excuse in the book to not wear it all.  When he went to JRTC in October, not long after getting it, suddenly it was too difficult to take.  When he came back, he had a terrible rash that no one could diagnose so we had no idea if he was contagious.  So, I slept on the couch for weeks and he slept in the bed,… without the mask.  His reasoning?  Because I wasn’t there, there was no need for it.  Never mind that he has it for his health, but he could have worn it and gotten used to it then.  Then he had his surgery and he slept on the couch for weeks while he was recovering, unable to sleep on his back with the open incision.  There was no reason why the machine couldn’t come to the living room, but he wouldn’t wear it.  So again, no getting used to it.  He finally came back to bed for about a week, after the incision healed enough, and wore the mask, taking it off in the night.  Soon after, he started clawing at the itchy, healing incision, tearing it open.  So back to the couch he went just days later,… without the mask.  No sooner did that start to heal and he had his wisdom tooth out, which left him in pain and legitimately unable to wear the mask.  So on the couch he remained without the mask.  He finally came back to bed a few nights ago, and the mask thing is once again an issue.

All told, since he got the mask in the middle of October, he has not worn it consecutively for more than about a week. 90% of that time, we have been sleeping apart because of his health issues.  Until the tooth, not one of those issues precluded him from wearing the mask and giving himself a chance to get used to it. 

I am frustrated because I feel like I don’t matter.  That the fact that I am being beat on in his sleep isn’t important, but the minor inconvenience of the mask is important.  It hurts.  There are nights when I am in the bathroom throwing up because he has gotten me in the stomach, or nursing a bloody nose, or mopping up a scratch from his nails.  There are mornings when I am bent over, walking like I am 90 years old because of all of the knees to the already messed up lower back and tailbone.  One of these days, he is going to hurt me badly enough that I end up in the ER and no one is going to believe that he didn’t do it on purpose.  And he isn’t.  He isn’t at all abusive.  It’s how his body reacts when he is sleeping because of the apnea. 

It’s not fair and I am tired of starting every day being annoyed and in pain and resentful.  I am trying to change my world a little, and it is completely derailing me.