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More Lives Lost Through Undiagnosed Sleep Apnoea
This article has really touched me and, although it's sad, I want to share it as a reminder to ourselves we must never drive if our treatment is going wrong and we feel sleepy, but also in the hope that others may read it and it will encourage people who suspect they may have sleep apnoea, to seek help. 3 lives have been lost through a suspected sleep apnoea sufferer falling asleep at the wheel. So sad......
A loving father fell asleep at the wheel killing himself and two members of his family on the way back from a sunshine holiday, an inquest heard today.
Stephen Padden, 56, was suspected to be suffering from a sleep disorder when he nodded off just a few miles from their Porthcawl home.
The father-of-three was driving from Gatwick Airport after a surfing holiday in Morocco when he crashed off the M4 near Cardiff.
Retired BT engineer Mr Padden was killed along with his son, Tom, 20, and partner, Louise Evans, 23.
Mr Padden’s wife Suzanne, 51, miraculously survived the crash, along with their grandson Logan, six months, who was strapped into a car seat.
Logan suffered only a minor cut to the face but was left an orphan too young to remember his mother and father.
The inquest heard the three who died were not wearing seatbelts when the Peugeot 406 hit a crash barrier on the M4 near junction 33.
Nursing manager Mrs Padden told the hearing how she had booked afternoon flights back from Morocco to avoid her husband driving late at night.
But the flight was delayed for five hours and the family landed at Gatwick at 7.45pm before setting off on the four-hour drive back to Wales.
Mrs Padden said: “As a qualified nurse, I believed that Stephen had some sort of sleep disorder.
“I booked the afternoon flight to avoid him driving at night. But because of the delay we didn’t arrive until the evening.
“I can’t be sure that made Stephen any more tired but it certainly didn’t help.”
Mrs Padden said her husband “was not himself” during the holiday and said Warfarin tablets he was taking for deep vein thrombosis were giving him flushes.
She told the inquest how they stopped for a meal and coffee on a service station en route.
She said: “I asked Stephen if he wanted me to drive but he said he was fine after the coffee.
“I fell asleep and the next thing I remember the car was rolling and there were loud bangs. It felt like a dream.
“My first reaction was for the baby but I could see he was in his car seat. To my horror no-one else was in the car.
“I was screaming. I could see that Tom was lying in the road and I could tell he was critically injured.
“Further down I could see two bodies – they were not moving and I presumed they were dead.”
She told how Mr Padden would stop breathing for 12-14 seconds at a time when he was asleep before taking a “deep breath”.
Mrs Padden said: “I kept on to him to see his doctor if there was a problem. If he went to the doctor he did not follow up any advice.”
The inquest heard the family GP said Mr Padden had not been treated for sleep disorder.
Mrs Padden was wearing a seatbelt but the other three members of her family had been thrown out of the car in the crash just before midnight on January 17 of this year.
The inquest heard 999 crews arrived to pronounce Mr Padden and Miss Evans dead. Tom Padden died the next morning in hospital.
Drivers on the M4 told how the Peugeot – with two distinctive surfboards on the roof – “zoomed” past them.
Driver Gemma Beveridge, 23, told the hearing she was worried about the way it was being driven in “spurts”, going fast, then slowing down and wavering between lanes.
She said: “I was not sure if it was boy racers or if the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel.
“I remember thinking what on earth was he doing. I saw him hit the barrier and there were sparks as the car went up in the air.”
Miss Beveridge stopped to help and was handed six-month-old baby Logan by distraught Mrs Padden at the roadside.
Pc Philip Painting, who investigated the crash, said: “If they had their seatbelts on they would have remained in the vehicle and their injuries would have been significantly reduced.”
The surfing-mad family, of Porthcawl, had been on a week’s holiday to Morocco.
Tom Padden was a former Welsh junior surfing champion and hoped to make a living out of it.
The family had posed for happy family photographs with Logan shortly before they flew home.
Cardiff coroner Mary Hassell said: “Stephen’s driving was erratic. He was braking and speeding up. He didn’t apply the brakes at the time of the accident.
“It seems to me extremely likely that Stephen fell asleep at the wheel and then, to compound that, they were not wearing their seatbelts.”
She recorded three verdicts of accidental death.
A statement from the family said: “Louise, Thomas and Stephen passed away as a result of a tragic accident. Their death has left a huge void in the lives of so many, it has left a young child without parents and grandfather.
“All family members would like to thank everyone for their support.
“Tom had taken to being a father as he did everything else in life, without fear and with total conviction.
“He had been a wonderful father and we watched him become a man.
“He was devoted to Louise and their baby son, Logan, who would spend hours watching him surfing.
“Louise was the perfect match for Tom and would have been a wonderful mother. For a couple so young they were remarkable parents.”
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Richard Mundy on
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The onus is on the driver to surrender his licence once he has been diagnosed, despite the facts that show 90+% of drivers have their licence returned once they are confirmed as responding to treatment, there is a reluctance. For the professional driver, no licence = no job, and not knowing when you will get it back remains a problem. How is he going to look after his family till he can start driving again?
There can be no excuse for ignoring treatment, not when that treatment is pretty well 100% guaranteed to solve the problem but there needs to be a single, co-ordinated view among respiratory health professionals, Primary Care Trusts, GPs and the DVLA.
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Permalink Reply by Rosemary Kemp on
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Hello Suzanne,
How sad for you. There are no words anyone can say that will make you feel a lot better but "hindsight is a wonderful thing". There must be countless people out there who are getting away with the very same thing but they may well end up falling asleep at the wheel and causing a fatal accident as well.
For two years before I was diagnosed, I knew I had a problem but didn't take it seriously. I was sent an appointment from the sleep unit but didn't go. My GP had flagged up the problem but as my husband said he didn't know whether I was stopping breathing or not "because he was asleep at the time" I told the sleep unit and my GP that it would have to wait until such a time when my husband would think it helpful to actually stay awake for long enough to monitor my sleeping behaviour!
No-one suggested I have a sleep study to ascertain the necessary information and I didn't know what the sleep unit appointment might achieve. I had no idea what cpap was and just thought I'd get another load of reprimand about being overweight!
So, although I never fell asleep at the wheel after turning down the appointment at the sleep unit, I could have. I remember many occasions when I nearly fell asleep at the wheel but I always had a good excuse. I convinced myself that it was due to being too fat and working too hard. Overweight people were bound to get more tired if they worked really hard like I did! My optician said that it was the sun visor on my windscreen reacting with the reactor lenses in my glasses making me want to close my eyes when driving and heavily tinted glasses were made for me!
I had fallen asleep at the wheel prior to all of this once but I put it down to working through into the night when I had a job with too much responsibility given that I had a difficult family to bring up (including a severely autistic child). So I resigned from the job as I had had a narrow escape! I had woken up on the wrong side of the road but had hit nothing at all.
You will always wish that you had done something different but you were not to know necessarily what the repercussions might have been going to be. We are all capable of burying our heads in the sand and we are all capable of hiding from reality and things that are just too difficult to deal with! My heart goes out to you. People will learn from your situation no doubt but I know that that will not make you feel better now.
As you may not have read everything in this blog I'll just clarify that since I have been on cpap (and apap now) I have managed to lose almost 8 stone in weight naturally and sleep properly at night. Readers can learn from all of this! How very sad Suzanne!
Rosemary
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hi richard
as a nurse i was fully aware of the problems and had told steve over and over the risk he was taking, but i dont think he even understood what i was saying, but i should have known and stayed awake. i had asked him over and over to go to the sleep clinic but to no avail. and now we pay the ultimate price
suzanne
Richard Mundy said:It is very kind of you to post your thoughts here, Suzanne.
Reaching a diagnosis of Sleep Apnoea is not as simple as you might think, there are a number of issues that get in the way. For someone earning their living by driving, they would be naturally reluctant to own up to feeling sleepy at the wheel, because, if they did, they would most likely lose their driving-licence and their job. Their employer wouldn't raise the question of SA with his drivers, either, because he doesn't want to have to fork out for NHS screening of his fleet. And if the driver does go and see his GP there's a strong chance the GP will not recognise SA and simply tell the patient to 'Go away and lose some weight, come back in six months time.'
That's not all, believe it or not, the average length of time between first visiting his GP to complain of daytime tiredness and getting diagnosed by a respiratory/sleep consultant is around two years. That's before any treatment has begun; and in that time, most blokes would have given up, or had a fatal accident - and that is where the problem lies.
I am beginning a campaign to address all these issues, I have some big guns in support, and I would be delighted if you could join me. The website is almost finished, please go to www.truckershealthuk.wordpress.com and www.facebook.com/truckershealth for a better idea of what it's all about. You can find me at contact@truckershealth.org.uk, I would be delighted to hear from you.
If you make a note of the web address and give it to anyone you meet that has a daytime sleep problem, you can be helping to breaking down the barriers that surround this dreadful disorder.
Best wishes
Richard
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Driving: Here's a useful link from The Sleep Apnoea Trust
http://www.sleep-apnoea-trust.org/media/SATA%20Driving%20%20OSA.pdf
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I've just been reading a facebook conversation by women complaining that their husbands snore very badly.
I commented on the dangers of sleep apnoea, but they just continue to laugh about the hilarious noises their partners make.
They don't seem to realise that they could get something done about it.
Suzanne, you didn't ignore it, and you did what you could.
Thank you for coming here and sharing with us.
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To get some idea of what OSA can do, go to www.facebook.com/truckershealth and watch the video.
No-one was ever prosecuted for this, and thankfully the girl driving the car survived. But it could have been much different.
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Yes I've seen that Richard. The Truckershealth page is favourited on As I Live and Breathe's facebook page.
Scary!
Richard Mundy said:To get some idea of what OSA can do, go to www.facebook.com/truckershealth and watch the video.
No-one was ever prosecuted for this, and thankfully the girl driving the car survived. But it could have been much different.
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Permalink Reply by Kath Hope on
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.....and here's another article, but this time by an irresponsible driver and this tragedy could have been avoided:-
"The tragic case of the truck driver Paul Couldridge shows just how lethal this condition can be. After falling asleep at the wheel, he ploughed into a car on the opposite carriageway of the M20 in Kent, killing a couple travelling in their BMW.
Couldridge had already been told by doctors to stop driving because they suspected he was suffering from OSA. It emerged in court that he had nodded off in the cab of his vehicle 15 times on previous journeys, causing minor incidents, but he still continued to drive despite the obvious seriousness of his condition.
Paul Couldridge was jailed for eight years and banned from driving for life."
http://www.drivermetrics.com/2011/10/driver-fatigue-and-obstructive...
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I wonder how many other people ignore these symptoms even when they have had them exposed! I bet there are loads of time bombs out there on the roads waiting to nod off at the wheel. Let's hope that this 8 year sentence gets good publicity so that undiagnosed and selfish OSA sufferers start to realise just how dangerous it is to drive when sleep is so close. The expression "Drink driving destroys lives" can only be matched (or even overtaken) by "Driving when tired kills. Take a break!" Better still, "Driving when tired kills. Stop! Get it treated now."
Our livelihoods are on the line when we don't drive but this is nothing compared to our lives are on the line and so are the lives of others.
This doesn't sound very eloquent to me but you know what I mean.
Rosemary
Kath Hope said:.....and here's another article, but this time by an irresponsible driver and this tragedy could have been avoided:-
"The tragic case of the truck driver Paul Couldridge shows just how lethal this condition can be. After falling asleep at the wheel, he ploughed into a car on the opposite carriageway of the M20 in Kent, killing a couple travelling in their BMW.
Couldridge had already been told by doctors to stop driving because they suspected he was suffering from OSA. It emerged in court that he had nodded off in the cab of his vehicle 15 times on previous journeys, causing minor incidents, but he still continued to drive despite the obvious seriousness of his condition.
Paul Couldridge was jailed for eight years and banned from driving for life."
http://www.drivermetrics.com/2011/10/driver-fatigue-and-obstructive...
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