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Snoring and a Brief History of the Quest for a Cure
When I was eight, my dad moved our family to North Dakota. If the culture shock of living in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere wasn’t bad enough, he made the five of us move into a two-bedroom apartment while our house was being built. Sure, my sisters and I complained about having to share a bedroom and all, but that wasn’t the worst part. Every night around 2 am, when my dad finally passed out in front of the news, the walls of that apartment shook with the thunderous sounds of his slumber.
His snoring started off gently; a low rumble with each breath. As his body relaxed, it gathered resonance. The rumble escalated into the sound of a motor. The motor into a roar. Once he was fully in REM sleep, he added a percussion section of sputtering and choking sounds. He would continue like that through the night, the ebb and flow of a cyclical power saw punctuated by pauses of deafening silence. On nights when the pauses lasted more than a few seconds, my older sister would stand over his bed, worried he would stop breathing altogether. For six months, he was the only one who got any sleep, even if that sleep wasn’t particularly restful.
Snoring is common, but it’s not normal.
We’ve probably all experienced living with a snorer. Whether or not we admit it, we’ve probably even been…
