I saw this story and I thought I'd post it - not sure if everyone's surgery is this successful, but this guy seems happy:

Sleepless coach clears air on apnea

Coach promoting awareness of disorder following own surgery.

By RANDY PETERSON
DesMoines Register
July 30, 2005

Ames, Ia. - When spouses end up sleeping in separate rooms - well, you've got a problem.

For Iowa State men's basketball coach Wayne Morgan, the problem was incessant snoring from the time he went to bed after watching game video until . . .

"I was diagnosed to have (obstructive) sleep apnea - then got it corrected," said Morgan, speaking publicly for the first time since undergoing surgery in May to cure the condition that the American Lung Association says annually afflicts 4 percent of men and 2 percent of women in the United States.

"I can breathe better than I ever have in my life. It's like a whole new world out there for me," Morgan said.

It's a clear-breathing world for the 54-year-old Morgan.

It's a world in which he mostly sleeps instead of mostly unknowingly gasps for air. It's a world in which, when not on the road, he wakes up next to his wife again.

"His snoring was getting so bad that I had to leave the room," said Maribeth Morgan, Wayne's wife of 13 years. "If I fell asleep before he did, then it was usually OK. If I didn't - that's when I had to go and sleep somewhere else."

Morgan, who declined interviews shortly after the surgery, is speaking out now as a means of promoting awareness.

"Usually I want to be low key and shine the light on the players, but I started getting deluged with e-mails, letters and people coming up and telling me they have sleep apnea, too," Morgan said. "I'd be in Best Buy, and somebody would come up asking me what they thought they should do.

"I couldn't believe all these people had this, and I can only wonder how many people had it a long, long time ago and didn't even know it.

"If I can help any of them, then I'm there for them."

Morgan was unaware of the complexities of sleeping disorders until finally seeing a doctor.

"What I found out was unbelievable to me," Morgan said. "I was waking up 11.2 times an hour, which is about every five minutes, and the doctor said my oxygen saturation was below 70 percent. That put me in a risk for heart attack - that's how (former NFL star) Reggie White died."

Morgan's wake-up call came after he fell asleep on the examination table in the doctor's office.

"I went in for a physical examination and fell asleep while I was laying on the table waiting for the doctor to come in," Morgan said. "When the doctor came back in, he apparently looked at me for a while, then he said I needed to get a sleep study, because he noticed that I'd stopped breathing a few times.

"This was about a year ago, but I didn't think it was that important, so I didn't have a sleep study until last January."

The findings changed his life.

"They came back with this information that I had sleep apnea," Morgan said. "My wife said that explained the snoring being so horrible; it explained why she couldn't stand to be in the same room with me sometimes."

Morgan had two alternatives - he could sleep with a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure mask that provides a constant flow of oxygen to the lungs, or he could have surgery.

"At first, they wanted me to wear a CPAP, but I toss and turn, and have phobias against getting tangled up with something around my neck at night," Morgan said, "so I went right to the surgery."

On May 17 at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines, Morgan went under the knife - his tonsils, adenoids and uvula were removed.

"And they drilled two holes the size of my pinkie finger into my nose," Morgan said. "They stuffed my nose with long pieces of cotton, then when I blew my nose after four or five days, this long piece of black crud about the thickness of my finger came out. It was like an alien."

Gross, yes. Worth it?

"I'm breathing better now than I ever breathed in my life," Morgan said. "I have more energy, and I'm feeling stronger.

"My wife says there are still nights that I snore, but it's not as bad as it used to be. At least she's not leaving the room nearly as often."