"No Ignoring All My Snoring"

By Jerry Zezima

As a man who can’t stay awake for the 11 o’clock news, which isn’t worth watching anyway, I tire easily. Then I fall asleep. And I snore with enough force to wake up not only the dead, who sleep pretty soundly, but also my wife, who would like to kill me.

So I got a CPAP machine, which was supposed to cure my sleep apnea. Stupidly, which is how I do almost everything, I used it only a few times and put it in my closet.

After the machine sat there for several weeks, I had to return it to the diagnostics company. That’s because the insurance company, whose rates keep me awake at night, would no longer pay for a contraption that got more rest than I did.

I stopped using the sleep machine because — spoiler alert — I couldn’t sleep.

Also, I had to take off the mask that shot air up my nose if I needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. This happens so frequently that it should be called the Geezer 5K.

According to my doctors — primary care physician, cardiologist, cardiac surgeon and, of course, sleep specialist — the machine was good for my heart, an organ that works tirelessly and is kept going, in my case, with medication and red wine.

The machine also provided much-needed air to my brain, an irony not lost on me because I am, medically speaking, an airhead.

Realizing I had made a colossally dumb mistake, I called the sleep center for another CPAP machine. To get one, I had to participate in a second sleep study, which entailed staying overnight in a hospital.

So a technician could monitor my brain and cardiac activity, I was hooked up with more wires than the electrical grid of New Zealand.

The results were sent to Dr. Mohammad Amin, the specialist who ordered my first CPAP machine.

“The second time will be the charm,” he said. “But make sure you use it. Your wife will appreciate it. Wives are more sensitive to snoring than men.”

That statement was confirmed by Devin Moncayo, the respiratory technician who gave me my first CPAP machine.

“My mom was really tired of my dad’s snoring, so he got a machine a few years ago,” he said.

“How is it working out?” I asked.

“Great,” Devin replied. “They both sleep very well.”

“Do you see a lot of people like me who come back to get another machine because they stopped using it the first time?” I wondered.

“Not too many,” he said. “But I do see people who left their machine in a cab or forgot to bring it back from a trip.”

“Maybe they were sleepwalking,” I suggested.

Devin said the people at the diagnostics company aren’t sleeping on the job because they can monitor the operation of a CPAP machine.

“There’s a built-in modem that tells them if you are using it,” he said.

“If I don’t, the machine falls asleep, right?” I wondered.

“Yes,” said Devin. “And it doesn’t snore.”

He gave me a second machine along with a nasal pillow, which sends air into my nostrils, and a full mask, which covers my nose and mouth.

“Good luck this time,” he said. “I hope you and your wife sleep well.”

Neither Sue nor I got much rest the first night because I used the mask, a clear plastic face covering that was connected to the machine with a long tube. I looked like a deep-sea diver.

“It sounded like you were drowning,” Sue said the next morning.

That night, I used the nasal pillow.

“You didn’t snore at all,” she reported.

Since no noise is good news, I have used it ever since. And the extra air to my brain has helped me realize that the machine works like a dream.

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima