 
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Monday, January 17, 2000
By Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Five years ago, Bud O'Donnell worked 10 to 12 hours a day, delivering gasoline, diesel fuel and kerosene in Western Pennsylvania. In 1997, he decided to cut back on his tiring schedule, so he delivered petroleum products in the morning and drove a school bus in the afternoon.
Despite the easier schedule, he'd still practically collapse when he went home. By dinner, he was so exhausted he'd fall asleep right where he sat.
"If you pause during the conversation, I'm asleep, sitting up at the table. My fork would fall out of my hand," said O'Donnell, 57, of Chicora, Butler County. "That isn't normal."
O'Donnell's wife, Norma, finally persuaded him to see a doctor after she read a newspaper ad for a sleep apnea study that listed 10 common symptoms. O'Donnell had eight of them, including his tendency to stop breathing for long periods at night.
"That's what really scared me," she said.
O'Donnell was referred to a Butler sleep disorders clinic, and Dr. Lewis Kline's staff brought him in for observation. They quickly found out why he was so tired: During the night, O'Donnell would stop breathing anywhere from 26 to 56 times each hour, until his oxygen-starved brain would rouse him so he'd start breathing again.
He simply wasn't getting any sleep and, come morning, "I'd drag to get up. I forced myself to get up," O'Donnell said.
Then he was off to another day of hauling gasoline by morning, delivering children home from school in the afternoon.
O'Donnell has sleep apnea, a disorder in which a person's airway gets blocked during sleep until the oxygen-starved brain startles the body partially awake, so the person will start breathing again. Among the general population, it occurs in up to 4 percent of people. Because of their lifestyles -- long hours of driving, little exercise, questionable diets -- up to 15 percent of truckers may have diagnosable sleep apnea, specialists say.
That means perhaps 1 million sleep-deprived truck and bus drivers are on the roads. Yet the standard U.S. Department of Transportation physical, required for all commercial drivers, does not screen for the disorder.
Sleep apnea among truck and bus drivers probably does not pose as great a same safety hazard as simply working too many hours and not getting enough rest, said Dr. Allan Pack, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Sleep Disorders in Philadelphia.
But in some drivers, sleep apnea compounds those other problems, he said.
"Sleep apnea just makes it worse," he said.
O'Donnell said he didn't feel in danger of falling asleep while driving. If he got tired along the way, he'd stop the truck and walk around it a few times.
His doctor is not so sure.
"They all say that, but it only takes one brief lapse. A guy feeling sleepy at 5 or 6 o'clock, who falls asleep at the dinner table, and he wants to tell you he was fine at 2 o'clock? I don't believe that at all," Kline said. He added that O'Donnell is fine now that he's undergone treatment.
While sleep apnea could fall under general Department of Transportation restrictions about respiratory problems that might affect driving, a few simple questions that might signal the disorder are rarely asked by examiners.
"They're interested in your eyes, and your hearing and your blood work," O'Donnell said. "They want to bang on your knees and they want to see if you can stand up right. They ask a lot of questions, but they never ask too much about sleep."
After nine years treating Pittsburgh area patients with sleeping problems, Kline said, "I have never had a referral from a [Department of Transportation] examiner. That tells you something. I don't think they are asking about it."
There's at least one compelling reason why they should: Raymond Glenn Holsopple.
In April 1995, Holsopple, 46, a trucker living in Somerset County, fell asleep while driving his truck on U.S. 301 in Maryland and rammed the back of a van, killing four people. Holsopple was charged with manslaughter but, just before the trial was to begin, those charges were dropped. The reason: Two physicians, including Dr. Patrick Strollo from the UPMC Health System, said Holsopple suffered from sleep apnea.
Holsopple reportedly later underwent surgery to widen his airway, then apparently moved away. Even the attorney who defended him said he doesn't know his whereabouts.
Strollo, citing doctor-patient confidentiality, said he could not discuss the particulars of Holsopple's case.
He did say: "There is data out there that suggests it would be reasonable in the truck driving population to screen them for sleep apnea."
Unlike other conditions, apnea is treatable and even curable. O'Donnell wears a special mask over his nose at night that pumps oxygen into his lungs. Within two days of using the mask at night, he noticed he was more wakeful and had more energy. Now he rarely falls asleep before bedtime.
"I think it saved my life, because I was getting so tired I couldn't stay awake," he said. "I was so tired, something was going to happen."