Husband has sleep apnea, acute resp failure, and morbid obesity....Info needed please.

My husband is 42 yrs.old was 587 lbs. when he went into the hospital in January 2013 for acute chronic resp. failure. He recently went back into the hospital on May 15-22, for the same reason. He also has sleep apnea. I was wondering if anyone has any information that would help us out regarding this. I'm trying to help him out with losing weight and getting the gastric by-pass surgery. But he doesn't have part B medicare until July 1st.  Also the the hospital wants him to be on a diabetic diet/consistent carb diet 4 gram sodium diet. Does anyone else follow this sort of diet and can help out. I've been doing portion control for him since he got out of the hospital in January. Any help would be great. My husband told me that his doctor said his body may not handle another episode with his resp. failure and I'm pretty scared.  

Just checking in with you to see how things are going...Did your husband get his CPAP yet? I'm a lightweight, but I have severe sleep apnea. I simply cannot breathe when I'm lying down. It takes a couple weeks to get used to it, but for me it's been a God-send.

I have some experience with low sodium--my husband had congestive heart failure following an episode of septic shock. Ugh. I had to completely relearn how to cook. Everything I made was loaded with sodium!  I had to remove every single item of processed food from my kitchen--all bread, hamburger helper mixes, soups, chili, frozen dinners. I became a sodium detective, looking for hidden sodium in canned veggies, tuna, chicken breasts, frozen vegetables, salad dressings, pancake mix, etc. It's hard but not impossible.

As far as the diabetic diet, well, there are lots of different thoughts on that. Has your doctor set a carb limit for him?  I know when I was dealing with my diabetes, my doctor wanted me to keep my carbs below 100gm/daily; even better was below 50. To do that I had to increase my protein to over 70gms/ daily. I lost about half my excess weight over a period of 2 years. Unfortunatly, when i rebelled I gained all of it back. Thus, I am here today awaiting WLS.