Sleep apnea is no fun. I've waked up with my heart pounding, feeling terrified- which is appropriate considering I nearly died in my sleep. It's no fun to be tired and on the verge of falling asleep all day long.
But it makes me very sad to read comments about how if the partner of someone with apnea can't sleep, she should wake up the person with apnea and make them leave the room. Because in my case, that would mean either I'd have to go without my CPAP, or I'd have to get up, pull the bed out, unplug the CPAP, carry it to another room, and set it up there. I wouldn't have a problem with a partner deciding he couldn't tolerate the sound, and we'd have to have separate accommodations. But if he said, 'Go sleep elsewhere without your CPAP' it would sound like 'and I don't care if you die before morning.' And I can't imagine that the rigamarole of moving my CPAP would enable him to get to sleep easier than him getting up and leaving. It would sound like, to me, that he was saying, 'I know you're doing this to annoy me, and you're not going to get by with it. I'm going to make sure your sleep is as disturbed as mine is.'
Nobody wants to have a life-threatening medical illness, but having a spouse who blames you for it would be far, far worse.