Patient Story: Airline Pilot John Nitz Reclaims His Life From Sleep Apnea
Airline Pilot John Nintz thought that the fatigue and health issues caused by his obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) would be solved by a CPAP machine. But the breathing machine made life more miserable without solving his medical problem. He searched the country for an alternative solution to his sleep apnea, but kept coming up empty. But then the 56-year-old airline pilot from Sterling, Illinois, found Surgical Sleep Solutions.
Discovering CPAP was a false hope
Like so many sleep apnea patients who are prescribed a CPAP machine to use at night, John found that his sleep wasn’t improving, and the machine was a misery on top of everything else.
“Anybody that has had sleep apnea and has to be on CPAP knows the difficulties that arise from it,” John says. “It was a false hope. At the end of the day, you’d read the readout on the CPAP that says you slept 8.5 hours but yet you’d get up in the morning and be dragging around. And you’d still be tired.”
Many people just toss their CPAP in a closet and choose to live with their disease and the lowered quality of life and health problems that come with it. But John kept searching for another solution. Coming up empty again and again, he thought that he would never feel totally healthy again.
“Every doctor that I saw just couldn’t give me a cure. Before I met Dr. Taylor, I was resigned and hopeless,” he says. “I was like, my life is going to go downhill from here. I don’t have a lot to look forward to.”
A light at the end of the tunnel
John didn’t give up his search, and he reaped the benefits. He found Surgical Sleep Solutions and had a consultation with Dr. Taylor about bimaxillary advancement sleep apnea surgery (also known as maxillomandibular advancement).
While he was worried about having a drastic surgery to fix his issue, as well as the recovery time, he was reassured by other patients’ stories.
“What really attracted me to Dr. Taylor was the passion of the people who had this done,” John explains. “They said, Look, if you go through this, it’s going to be a journey, it’s going to be a tough journey, there’s going to be pain, there’s going to be expense, there’s going to be downtime, but at the end of it you will come out of this thing a brand new person.”
He weighed the pros and cons to the sleep apnea surgery, and then took the plunge.
Life after sleep apnea surgery
John knew that there was a difference in the way he slept right away—and Dr. Taylor was the one to confirm it for him.
He describes waking up the day after his sleep apnea surgery:
“The day after my surgery, he came in early, before anyone else did—he was the first guy there except for the overnight staff—and he said, John I came in and sat in the room while you were sleeping and I just listened to you, and I knew that you were cured.”
Now, further down the road to recovery, John is amazed at the new life he has since he decided on the surgery. Unlike with his CPAP machine, he sleeps well and wakes up feeling refreshed for the first time in years.
“My wife, for the first couple months, would wake me up in the middle of the night because she honestly thought I was dead because I was so quiet, I wasn’t moving,” he says. “I was sleeping so hard.”
It’s hard to even compare the despair he felt when he was using CPAP with how he feels now, post-surgery.
“My wife says there’s before and after John,” he says. “I mountain bike, I exercise. I’m 56 years old and it’s like I’m 38 now. After Dr. Taylor, I feel like I have my life back… He is really one of the do-gooders in this world.”
A message to others with sleep apnea
Now that John is finally feeling better and living an active, fulfilled life, he wants to share his story in hopes of helping others who also suffer from OSA and who don’t benefit from CPAP. Just as he was encouraged by others’ stories of success, he wants to add his voice to theirs.
“People are afraid to do it. And I want to say: Do not be afraid to do this thing,” he says. “I wish that four or five years ago someone would have come to me and tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, Dr. Taylor out in Bozeman, he can fix you.”
He also wants to share that although there is pain and a recovery involved in sleep apnea surgery, it’s nothing to compare to the pain of having sleep apnea and using CPAP to no avail on a daily basis.
“Pain isn’t even a part of it. When you are on CPAP, you are way beyond pain,” he explains. “You have an irritant in your life that is so draconian that you can get through this no problem.”
Could sleep apnea surgery be right for you?
While some with sleep apnea find that CPAP works for them, others don’t find relief—or they find that CPAP comes with so many negatives that they cancel out any good. For these groups, bimaxillary advancement sleep apnea surgery may be a life-changing alternative.
To learn more about the surgery, read about the procedure in detail.
To learn more about Dr. Taylor and Surgical Sleep Solutions, read his bio.