Bill,
I found your post to be very interesting in that you said that these respiratory issues have not been widely associated with IBM....We had just been told that also.
I had always read that IBM does not affect the lungs, however my husband Tom has had these issues with breathing for a while now, especially when he gets pneumonia. After five years of going to the same doctor for IBM, this past year we changed to another MDA doctor and he was very concerned about Tom's breathing. The first doctor to ever mention "concerned". After the two night study at the sleep clinic, the report came back with some very serious issues concerning Tom's breathing. He was getting less than 50% of the air he needed to breathe as well as when he was sleeping he would stop breathing for up to two minutes at a time. I knew that he was having some trouble sleeping, waking up all the time, and making really wierd noises. They have since put him on a Bipap machine and he is trying to get used to sleeping with it. I say this only to report to others that it may not be sleep apneia that some of you think you have but the muscles around your lungs may be so weak that you are unable to breathe like you are supposed to as Bill has mentioned. This can be dangerous. After reading and posting on this discussion board for over five years, you are the first person that I have ever read that has been put on a Bipap machine for this. I wonder how many others are out there as well. Are the Doctors getting smarter about IBM or is this just a fluke? Anyone else out there with IBM having the same problems?
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