"Snort, sort snort, I would stop breathing and then do that, ha ha, ha.”

That's Kathy Nelson describing what she sounded like as a heavy snorer, but on a girls' weekend, her friends noticed her seeming to stop breathing while asleep.

"I was exhausted. I had been exhausted for years. I got to the point that I wanted to be taking naps and I'm too young to be taking naps all the time,” Nelson says.

Dr. Jim Cygan heads up the sleep disorders clinic at Aspirus Wausau Hospital where Kathy headed to see if she had sleep Apnea.

You show up about 7 p.m. to one of these hotel-like rooms for an overnight stay. They stick these electrode devices all over your head and neck, no pins, no needles, they feel like band-aids. Once you're hooked up to lay down for a good nights' rest, it's up to the control room to monitor your breathing throughout the night to see if you indeed do have sleep Apnea.

Throughout the night, they watch to see how many times your throat collapses, closing off air flowage. If it happens more than five times an hour, they hook you up to a C-PAP machine and diagnose you with sleep Apnea.

"It looks silly, a strap here, so it's not an attractive thing. And then this big ol' honkin' thing. Looks like alien or something,” shares Nelson.

Kathy says the machine runs about $1,500, but was completely covered by her insurance. And alien looking and all, she says she wouldn't go a night without it.

"I started exercising because I have energy, my house is cleaner, well my son would disagree with that, I'm just much more cheerful,” Nelson says.

And her friends noticed too, "I would say within a month we were seeing pretty obvious changes,” Kari Bender-Burke says. “When she gets up, she's ready to go, is more well-rested. She looks great, just more concerned about her life, in charge of her life again.”

But it takes more than the air pressure machine.

"It can hit any age group as you get, unfortunately, as you get older, you don't do as much and might get heavier,” Dr. Cygan says.

Cygan says obesity is one of the leading causes of sleep Apnea. So Kathy says she's also working on dropping some weight, something she says she's happy to do with her newfound enthusiasm for life.