Help, My Power Is Out!

Oh my! It’s bedtime and all of a sudden, the power goes out. Your cell phone is charged, so you have your alarm clock for the morning. You have a flashlight and candles, so your light requirements are met in case you have to move around your house. The fridge and freezer aren’t on, but as long as the door is closed, your food will be fine for many hours.

So why are you so frantic that the power is out? Your continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine will not work. How are you going to sleep? Your sleep-saving constant rush of air flowing to your nose is cut off, and you don’t know what to do. Allow me to offer some advice that might save you from a total loss of a night’s sleep.

Get ready for the power to come back on

Unfortunately, you are going to have to accept the fact that you are not going to fall asleep with your CPAP on. There is nothing you can do about that. Now that you have accepted this, how can you reduce the complications of not having a CPAP?

The first thing you can do is turn on all the lights in your bedroom. Yes, I know they won’t work, at least not yet. Why would you turn on all the lights if they won’t work without power? Well, when and if power comes back on during the night, your room will light up and hopefully wake you up so you can put your CPAP on as quickly as possible.

You can even turn on a radio if you have one that will turn on like an alarm when the power comes back on. This doesn’t help while the power is out, but it sure can help give you a few hours of good sleep if the power comes back on in the middle of the night.

Make a plan to minimize snoring disruption

One thing that I would have to do is sleep in a different room as my wife. You might wonder how this is going to help you get some sleep? If your partner is anything like mine, you will get poked and woken up every time you start to snore.

My snoring is nothing to take lightly. It is loud and powerful. I don’t blame her because she needs her sleep too. Sleeping in the living room isn’t the most comfortable, but it will keep me from being woken up because of my snoring and will allow me to get more sleep than in my bed.

Yes, it isn’t the best solution, but it will help you and your partner.

Backup battery power

If you like to be prepared, you can always get a battery, like a car battery or marine battery, and keep one charged in your house or garage. There are adaptors you can get that have alligator clamps that you clamp to the positive and negative terminal, and the wires go to a single plug-in that looks like a single outlet.

This will give you power and an adaptor you can plug your CPAP into and use that when you sleep. This is kind of expensive, and you may never use it, so you have to think about that before investing, but in a power outage, it could be a sleep and lifesaver.

What do you do when the power goes out? Do you make a game plan ahead of time? Tell us more in the comments below!