Answer: First of all I have sleep apnea I am 61 and did not start treating it until it actually nearly KILLED ME! You are very lucky to catch it while young! You will have a very very good life a much more productive one I assure you!!!!!Forget numbers do not worry about details and I would advise against surgery! Next session you will meet the CPAP machine and find out the proper air pressure needed to keep your airways open to allow you to have good quality sleep! Have you heard about the levels of sleep? Well there are six one thru five are levels where the body is asleep but the last one is called REM for rapid eye movement at this level your brain sleeps ... your upper brain and your lower brain really stem operates on auto pilot! Well if you either fail to breath on automatic which is called central apnea or the airway is simply blocked off by an obstruction so no oxygen gets to the brain is drops out of REM and makes the lungs gasp for air! Now this event is what they count! If our brains never get to sleep we never really sleep at all and that is why we are always so tired because our brain is always waking up to tell our lungs to take a breath!The worse case condition and it happened with me was when I was in a simple operation in a hospital ... my automatic breath missed and the upper brain was asleep with anesthesia I JUST DID NOT BREATH AT ALL AND WAS AS THEY SAY DEAD FOR A LITTLE WHILE UNTIL THEY FIGURED IT OUT! I WENT AFTER THAT EPISODE TO A SLEEP CLINIC AND GOT MY LITTLE BUDDY THE CPAP MACHINE!