Tommie and his wife Sara had just returned home from a week’s vacation in the islands and they were both exhausted from the travel, airports, packing, and flight delays.  Not only that, Tommie made them both get up an hour earlier than necessary to go to the airport, and they were there as usual, three hours early.  And of course, Tommie enjoyed his two tiny bottles of bourbon on the airplane, which put him in a deep coma during the flight, mouth wide open, producing a cacophony of fuselage – vibrating snores and heaving grunts, prompting Sara to wake him up with smacks to the shoulder so that the other passengers would not attack him and strangle him then and there.  The pilot even notified the passengers there was unexpected turbulence, despite clear skies, but Sara knew the vibrations on the air frame were from Tommie’s snores.

Thankfully, he finally woke up when they were on descent to the airport, and he resumed his normal breathing pattern and his pendulous belly was no longer required to bounce up and down to participate in gas exchange. But it was good to be home again, and after throwing out some spoiled black bananas they left before travel, unpacking at least fifty percent of their bags and throwing dirty clothes in the laundry, they both passed out in bed, exhausted. But in their hurry to get to bed, they forgot to lock the doors, all the outdoor lights were turned off and they forgot to turn on their alarm system.

The home intruder came in through the unlocked garage access door, into the utility room and he sneaked quietly in to look in the kitchen to find wallets and purses for easy money and credit cards.  He couldn’t find any, so he thought he would walk down the hallway and look somewhere else and then Tommie suddenly blasted away with his wall – vibrating, house – shaking obnoxious snoring.  It was so loud and sudden, the snorting and grunts knocked the intruder to the ground and he hit the floor, hitting his head on a corner table, bleeding, and spraining his ankle, and his gun went flying.

Sara immediately woke up, smacked Tommie harder than ever, and Tommie immediately jumped up, wiped the drool from his face, found his .357 magnum under his bed and found the intruder, crawling towards the door, bleeding.  Tommie pointed his gun at him and said, “Got you asshole!”  The intruder was shaking with fear, Tommie made sure he put himself between the intruder and the man’s gun, then told Sara to call 911 for the police, which she had already done.  Tommie was shaking, but always wondered if he would shoot a man in this situation, but it was not necessary, thankfully.

The police came, arrested the intruder, and filed his report with the couple.  When the police were gone, Sara hugged Tommie, and kissed him passionately, and said, “Tommie, you are my courageous hero!”

Ok now.  That is an example of Heroic Snoring

And I thought about this long and hard, because that is the only example I could come up with to validate the term “Heroic Snoring”.   Nothing else makes sense. Why do I mention this?  Well, sleep technicians are trained professionals and very good at what they do. They monitor people during overnight sleep studies, looking for sleep apnea and other sleep disorders.  They write notes on their data collection, then, I receive the notes and data, and provide a physician interpretation of the study. But what I have noticed is that not always, but some technicians for years, continue to describe the night as “The patient demonstrated heroic snoring throughout the study.” Or he/she had “frequent heroic snoring.”  Now, I always felt that was an unusual way to describe snoring.  Seems incongruous, or an oxymoron.  How in the world, can obnoxious, wall – vibrating noises, produced by an obstructed human airway be described as heroic?  I understand it is not nice to say obnoxious or nasty, but wall – vibrating kind of gets the picture across.  Or maybe the simple adjective loud would suffice.

Snoring is a symptom of an obstructed oro -pharyngeal airway, associated with obstructive sleep apnea, or if not present, at least a sign that obstructive sleep apnea may occur down the road.  Obstructive sleep apnea, when present, can cause blood pressure problems, cardiac problems, oxygen problems and of course, pissed – off spouse problems.

But now I finally understand! Snoring can be Heroic!   The technicians are in fact, correct with their description.

© SRCarson 2021