I forgot to mention that when I am lying down I eventually get to a point where I cant breath and have to sit up or stand to finally breath again. I get between 11 and 18 minutes of sleep at a time due to this. Yes, I started writing down the time I lay down, and the time I suddenly wake unable to breath. However, I did discover that if I place a semi hard ball about the size of a large grapefruit under a specific part around the middle of my spines length, I can breath just fine. Problem with that is it hurts like heck to do that, and even makes my abdomen hurt after I lay on the ball for a while. When I first started trying the ball under my spine when lying down it was so painful I didn't want to ever do it again, but I could breathe so i kept it up. Now I have been doing this for around 4 months and it works, but hurts. Problem with this is that when I move in my sleep I change the location of the ball and it only has to be off that one spot by an inch or less and it wont work. Then I wake up and I have the pain associated with lying on the ball.

My speculation is nerves that have to do with the lungs or muscles that work the diaphragm are in that area of the spine. Somehow, I suspect because the load bearing and bending axis has been moved from my lower spine due to all the hardware, to the middle of the spine, these nerves have somehow been compressed and laying on the ball releases them from compression.

Now this does work to prevent not being able to breath, but it doesn’t do anything for hard breathing or having to gasp to get deep breaths and not feel light headed. When I am out in public I pretend to yawn when I have to do this as I have to gasp for the air. So I am yawning a lot. Sometimes the yawns are real though as I don’t get a lot of sleep anymore. As you might imagine.