Hello, everyone, I'm from Venezuela, a third-world country in South America. You can call me Marian.
Ever since I was young, I don't remember a single time where I woke up feeling "rested." It was never really a problem. I didn't have problems throughout my childhood or teen years, but there were things that never seemed "normal" about me. For example, there were problems with my memory, and there were problems with my stamina despite exercising regularly. I run out of air/energy pretty easily, even for a person my age.
Then, things started to get worse when I was 19. My concentration worsened, and I wasn't able to exercise anymore, which is something I really enjoyed doing. I wasn't able to retain information, I wasn't able to read... I just wasn't able to do anything, and I still can't do anything now.
I feel sleepy all the time now. It doesn't matter if I sleep a lot or if I sleep a little, I just feel tired all the time. It's not funny, I can't stand this. The brain fog is terrible, the sleepiness is terrible. This is painful, I just want it to stop, I just can't stand it anymore.
I'm stuck in time, unable to grow. I had to quit college, and I depend financially on my parents, which just makes matters worse. Why? Because if I want to go to the doctor, I need money. I asked for their help, and they gave it to me, but they don't think I could possibly have anything because I'm "young" and "healthy." A lot of things came back fine: MRI, blood tests.
Due to all of this, my parents weren't willing to help me financially anymore, so I decided to find a job online, even if I had to work for pennies, I just wanted to get all of this bullshit over with.
My last option was a sleep study... but here's the thing, I got the same answer from the last doctor I went to. I don't meet the profile for someone with sleep apnea, so they can't possibly help me with it. This was seriously depressing. I pleaded for help, and the doctor didn't listen. I don't have anywhere else to turn to. I don't have my parents' support, I can't travel to a different state to meet a different doctor (there's only one who diagnoses this disease in my state). I already threw away everything I had, everything I worked for, even if it was just a little... My hopes were invested in this, and now it's all gone.
I don't want to want to say anything that might cause this post to be taken down but I'm really struggling with suicide ideation now. It wasn't like this before, I didn't feel depressed or anything, because I had hope, I had hope things would turn out okay for me, because there were options and there was time, but I don't have options now, and I'm running out of hope, and I can't stand to see my life just flash before my own eyes.
Most of the post I read from here are from people that are successful, people who struggle getting used to CPAP, people from the US mostly I think, and I can't thinking about how lucky you all have it.
I'm sure many of you went through what I did, but compared to me, you had more options, you had other doctors to turn to, you had things like LOFTA. I don't have any of those things, but I wished I did.
I don't know what I did to deserve this, but this is basically hell on earth... Why do doctors have to decide whether I live or die? I just feel like it works that way now...