The danger of sleep apnea.

Like most men, and like most ex-athletes, I'm a driven, goal-oriented person. Not content to dwell on yesterday's accomplishments, I try to make sure I'm looking ahead, pressing forward.

This kind of orientation has certainly been helpful in my career pursuits. For the past 12 years, I was blessed to co-host the FOX NFL Sunday pre-game show with three very talented professionals in Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson. Rated as the No. 1 pre-game show for the entire time, we never were complacent. We were constantly studying, researching, working the phones and calling one another to stay current. My weekly travels from my East Coast home to Los Angeles and back were approximately 5,000-mile roundtrips for 20 weeks, 22 including pre-season telecasts. My Sundays were 12-hour days, from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.

But, I digress. The point of all of this is, I was accustomed to pushing myself and not allowing a little fatigue to concern me. By Thanksgiving, the back-and-forth travel would start to wear on me a bit, but I'd block it out and press forward. So it was not unusual I thought, when my wife, Dorothy, would tell me that I was snoring loud enough to pull the paint off the walls. My thinking was, What guy doesn't snore?!

Another symptom I ignored was my inability to retain as much information during my study periods later in the NFL season. I found myself reading an entire paragraph or two over and over. I constantly found myself waking up in the morning feeling as if I need another six to seven hours of sleep. Again, I chalked it up to the long season and bi-coastal living. Add to that my wife telling me she was not sleeping well because she was constantly shaking me during the night ... because I repeatedly stopped breathing!

Well, the real eye-opener came when my ...