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Sleep Apnoea (apnea ? ) and the Commercial Truck Driver

A subject close to the Captain’s heart (and brain) this week.

Much has been made lately, particularly by our American friends, for the need for proper rest periods for interstate freight truck drivers. Many in Europe will look down their noses at this protestation as most trucking organisations seem determined to avoid the imposition of tachographs, the ‘spy in the cab’ found in all EU lorries and which were originally resisted by drivers there.

By using easily forged log books many in Europe believe their cousins out West are missing the point. A tachograph provides incontrovertible evidence of a drivers work pattern. No boss can insist a trucker exceeds working hours regulations, no gung ho, drive all night, lunatic can pop a Benzedrine and fill in a time sheet worthy of Hans Christian Andersen. But sleepy truck drivers cause horrific accidents – lots of them.

There is however one aspect of the drivers rest argument that the Yanks are starting to take seriously.

Sleep Apnoea, an extremely common disorder, particularly amongst those of us over endowed in the waistline department.

A condition particularly prevalent amongst men and even more common when the man is a fat b------d who sits at the wheel of a lorry all day munching anything that isn’t green (with the possible exception of old pizza slices found in the footwell which he convinces himself ‘must be Jalapeno’s’).

Your author and editor was diagnosed with this condition after going a few rounds with a bloke in a long black cloak and an agricultural bent several years ago.

Sleep disorders of this type are now rampant and perhaps now is the time to explain a few facts to those who perhaps feel they are just a minor irritation (formerly guilty m’lud).

The term Apnoea comes from the Greek for breathe therefore it doesn’t need a lot of explaining that literally we are talking here of ‘sleep breath’, or rather we’re not; perhaps it should be called ‘sleep lack of apnoea’. Any road up what happens is you stop breathing; completely. There you are, having a nice kip, and you simply cease respiring.

Now after a while, sometimes quite a while, the brain realises it is about to die and decides to wake you up. Of course the biggest problem with this scenario is that unless you have sensible Mrs Captain lying next to you all night and giving you a sensitive, caring jab to the ribs every time you decide inhalation has gone out of fashion, you may well not know you even have a problem.

So here are some clues.

If you wake up with a headache like you drank a quart of tequila, dark rum and creosote the night before but in fact you went to bed with a cup of Horlicks, then it’s time to go see the man.

There is usually a questionnaire to complete (at least in the UK) which asks you to rate from 1 -10 how likely you are to fall asleep in certain situations, sitting quietly at home or in a traffic queue, that sort of thing.

If you are a candidate they kit you out with a mini recorder and some Velcro belts and sticky pads and you wear this lot when you get your next nights kip. After the subsequent computer read out you’ll be told if you have apnoea.

Now let’s get this straight, this is not just about you dozing off in the pm with a book.

It isn’t even about the numerous accidents, many fatal, that occur worldwide every month when truck drivers fall asleep at the wheel, although you might want to think about that.

No, this is just to let you know that what you have is a damn sight more dangerous than you probably know. When your brain jerks you awake or kicks off that big deep breath in the night when it thinks it’s dying – THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS.

The human body has very little storage capacity for oxygen. Unlike our marine cousins the whales and dolphins after three minutes without oxygen permanent brain damage will occur. A couple more minutes and it’s goodnight Vienna.

But damage starts to occur even earlier and as your sats (Oxygen saturation levels, not the school test dummy) drop, so brain cells start to shuffle of this mortal coil (they snuff it).

CO2 levels build up and that’s why you end up with a head like one of Keith Moon’s drum kits (God bless him).

Now the good news is that there is no need for anyone living in a civilised country to suffer; even better, there’s no surgery involved and the cure can stop your premature death (and that is what is occurring) in its tracks.

As I say, that’s the good news, obviously different strokes for different folks but generally you’ll end up with a treatment similar to that which your Captain (and the skipper’s wife) have enjoyed (note from Captainess ‘tolerated) for seven years or so.

Usually in cases of apnoea the cure consists of using a breathing aid, a Bi-pap or C-pap machine, which recognises when you stop and simply pumps the requisite amount of air into your lungs before damage occurs.  

This means wearing a mask all night and breathing via the machine.

You will look like the ghost of Hans or Lotte Hass or a late entry in the gimp convention (weekend wear section) and you will sound to your partner like Tiger Woods following twelve naked lovelies round the golf course, but you should get a good night’s sleep.

But much, much more importantly, if you’re out driving regularly there is far less chance that you’ll doze off and murder someone.

So, even if our friends in the USA finally decide that 21st century rig technology is for them, if you are a driver of car, van whatever, take a while to check it out if you have any symptoms, you might make a lot of people very happy, without them even knowing.

Pictures (from the top):

They Even Fell Asleep Early last Century,

The Who (just as I remember 'em),

Hans Hass (sans Lotte)

and

Some bloke (not yours truly, that would be too horrible) wearing a C-Pap mask and looking like he's undergoing simultaneous proctology.

Disappearing Britain - A Ramble & A Goodbye

This one will probably be for UK residents only.

Not that the rest of our readership aren’t welcome but sometimes the cultural crevasse intervenes and, just as your Captain struggles with why our cousins across the pond can’t spell, overseas readers might not have a clue what I’m on about.

Oh, and it will help if you’re over fifty.

First question. What happened to the Ford Sierras?

The ruddy things have disappeared, gone the way of the fabled white dog turds.

You can still see driving around Ford Cortinas of every model through from Mark I’s with their lovely triple division round tail lights that always appear on the backs of ancient caravans, even the odd Lotus Cortina ones with the green stripe that predated the Starsky and Hutch “Red Tomato”, that’s toe – mate – o phonetically, through the 1500 E’s and Mark three’s with no rear vision and the Mark IV which they tried to con us that a paint job and a new badge turned into the pretend Mark V (which like every unicorn you have actually ever seen was a horse with a facelift).

No, even the 40+ year old first embodiment of the Cortina still turns up regularly, compared that is to the Sierra. To an old git like me who can remember the great “Jelly Mould” controversy when the model was launched, and then the gradual acceptance that this was a worthy replacement for its popular forebear, it is the story of the dinosaurs all over again but in microcosm mode. To counter paraphrase the old soldier proverb Anglia’s and Escorts may fade away, but Sierras just die and evaporate.

Normally when something disappears from our daily lives there is a valid and explicable explanation. Staying with the car analogy, Fords other vanishing motor was the Corsair, always in an unfair contest with the Cortina (who decided to market those two at the same time?) the Corsair’s V4 power unit didn’t have the reliability of the Cortina engine. They blew up and waved goodbye after just a few years.

Austin Princesses rotted, Metros had their wheels fall off, all popular cars that didn’t last the course despite the huge numbers sold. But they were either badly engineered or rustbuckets. Marina’s lasted longer than their sibling All Aggros and, as for foreign makes, well let’s not mention the Lancia Beta, a car with a life expectancy of a World War One fighter pilot.

You bought it, looked at it, its engine fell out onto your driveway and you had it shot.

But the Sierra, like its replacement Mondeo, was a good car. It seemed relatively trouble free, comfortable and as time went on all cars started to look a bit like it, sure sign of a winner.

I trawled through dozens of video clips to illustrate my point. 90% were juvenile idiots (Ah, those were the days) blowing up engines and drifting their Sierras in interminably long, badly focused films with banging soundtracks or else ultra slick Ford promo videos.

So I settled on this professional job with dear old Tiff Needell calmly talking us through a man driving a "slightly" upgraded car whilst demonstrating how macho he is by ignoring the seatbelt laws.

  So that’s where they all went then.

So whilst on this ponder on the past what else has vanished from our lives without anyone paying due heed?

Well the most notable thing that springs to mind is of course, well, money.

It used to be so simple, four farthings or two halfpennies (that’s hayepnies ph.) to a penny (1d), 3d to a threepenny (thrupney) bit 6d to a tanner (sixpence) 12 = one shilling, 2 shillings a florin (two bob), 2 ½ shillings to a half crown (half a dollar) five bob bit (called a crown but nobody ever did because you only saw one minted on special occasions) a ten bob (shilling) note, a quid, a fiver and, very rarely, a tenner.

OK it wasn’t so simple, but a penny felt like money.

1971, in came decimalisation smallest coin – a halfpenny, they didn’t last long.

From Bottom Left (in the Queens English)

Shilling, Florin, Penny, Three Penny Piece, Sixpence and (centre) a Halfpenny.

In Estuary

Bob, Two Bob Bit, Penny, Thrupence, Tanner and Haypenny.

The satisfying bit however follows.

The battle of decimalisation, like the hundred years war, still rages, and although the die hards have been taken to the brink of defeat that good old reliable, leave it to the last minute, bloody mindedness still keeps the faceless hordes of unify everything, Federalistas at bay.

I believe it was the local Council in Hull or Grimsby who ruthlessly pursued local costermongers for selling fruit and veg by the pound not kilo. What a delight when some clever soul (not sole) pointed out that the public scales (Council owned and maintained) on the fish dock still weighed stubbornly by the stone, which is after all how the traders had bought them for hundreds of years.

The politicians thought, wrongly as it turns out, that the population would start to think in kilos and metres, as indeed many of the younger generation do. But mums still sent the kids to the shop for a pint of milk, the same measure that dad used to buy his beer and these symbolic units seem to be set fair to stay on the British books for the foreseeable future (unless Lord Mandy Voldemort reintroduces the death penalty for non metric thinking).

OK,OK, I know these things evolve. Avoirdupois (ruddy French never go out of fashion) measurements still cling on in the US, some places in Canada etc. and these were once from the Latin and yesteryear I’d be rambling on about pennyweights and scruples (yes it’s a now defunct weight)but the point of all this (I think) is that some things disappear from everyday life and good riddance whilst others induce a pang of remorse, of varying degrees, at their passing.

Which brings me to a dedication for this worthless monologue.

A good friend was cremated this week, two days short of his 48th birthday and about to start a new phase of his life in sunny South Africa.

Goodbye to Andy “Fatboy” Riches, a wicked sense of humour, a fine rugby player in his time, and an all round good bloke. No English church has ever seen a crowd so heavy per capita. The world is a shade greyer for his passing, his last break for the try line witnessed by a host of friends.

And one of us will never look at a giant brick fireplace or a pair of wet small boys pants (don’t ask) without remembering him.

Andy R.I.P.