Funky data--visit from Richard Nixon's ghost or aliens?

[robysue]

Folks,

Downloaded last night's data into Sleepy Head. And there's a mysterious 18-minute period with gaps in the wave form, but not the pressure curve or the leak curve. I've not had a chance to look at the wave form in Encore Pro.

Here's the big picture:

The gap at the far right corresponds to one of the machine on/off times listed in the sidebar under the sessions information. That's a real "turn the machine off and on" wake that I remember. At this point, when I wake up at night, I typically do turn the machine off briefly and back on without taking my mask off: It lets me get the excess air trapped in my mouth out without getting another mouthful of air. It also lets my tummy have a small little break. On these kinds of "turn the machine off and on" breaks in the wave form, there's always clear evidence of me taking some big breaths right before turning the machine off. And it takes a good minute or more after turning the machine back on for my breathing to get back to normal sleep breathing. And note that once the machine is off, the leak and pressure curves also stop.

But what gives with the two breaks in that are farther to the left in this big picture? Here's a closer view of the situation:
Neither of the mystery gaps in the wave form start immediately following a big breath or two. Indeed, they both seem to start in the middle of an unflagged event (or misflagged event) perhaps. Encore Viewer, by the way, shows the same event table that SH shows. So these events are not flagged there either

That first missing gap in the wave form looks like this on closer inspection:
Seems to be that I had some kind of an arousal and then ???? No breathing for 2 minutes with plenty of pressure pulses and no apnea? Followed by wave form dropping out completely? Gremlins in the machine keeping it from being able to detect the wave form? Bad spot on the data card? Richard Nixon's ghost? (Or more precisely, Rose Mary Wood's ghost?)

And when the wave form resumes, it resumes in the middle of a "normal sleep breathing" pattern:
But again peters out into a second mysterious gap preceded by lots of pressure pulses but no hypopnea flag. And when it resumes? Normal sleep breathing again. And again, the pressure curve and the leak curve continue merrily on their way as if nothing's happened to the wave form data.

Any ideas? Have I got a second bum machine? (My first System One was replaced in April because I woke up to it rebooting itself more than one.)

Finally: For those folks who want to say: You've got a leak and maybe that's messing with the machine's mind, please note that SleepyHead is reporting total leak here, not unintentional leak. And the leak rate of my mask at these pressures is something like about 25L/min

[Pugsy]

Well admittedly I don't look at all my reports but I have never had this happen with PR S1.
Since it makes no logical sense no matter how far out on a limb I might go... I vote for aliens.

I haven't looked at my reports for a few days. I will pull the card and look and go back to see if I have anything like that show up and let you know if I do.

Let us know if it shows up in Encore also. Do you have Pro? Flow won't show in Viewer and since pressure and leaks and the other items don't show a break I am thinking in Viewer all you will see is the one time when you know you turned it off and we see the normal breaks in all area.

[DrowsyDan]

I don't know the answer to your dillema, but I enjoyed the Watergate reference.

"I couldn't have taken your data, because I AM NOT A CROOK!"

[Pugsy]

Well I went back to April when I got this machine. I thought I had a couple but upon closer inspection I also had breaks in the pressure and leak so I had obviously turned off the machine. So none for me to look at.

It appears to be a break in flow data only. Why? I have no idea.
If you see the same thing with Onkor or Pro the perhaps a broken file? If not confirmed with other software then a bug in SleepyHead?

It is certainly odd that the pressure pulses went wild also. Maybe something in the sensors.

I can't think of anything that might cause the anomaly.

[jnk]

Uncovered evidence of a conspiracy in the following pictures . . .

[robysue]

Love the fun y'all had with my Nixon reference.

The plot grows thicker: Encore Viewer does indeed have breaks at roughly the times of those two "Watergate Tape Gaps", but appears to be missing the real one at 6:47.

I've not yet tried to look at this data in Encore Pro because I haven't had a chance to boot the blunderbuss that has Pro installed on it. And the last time I tried to get into Pro, I had two failed passwords and simply shut it down. So I'm not 100% sure that I remember the dang password.

As for looking at stuff in Onkor: Unless it's changed a lot since the last time I tried using it, the events and pressure curve never seemed to have much basis in reality as compared to the data in Encore and SH. The "problem" was that cpapdork had yet tweaked the code to deal with BiPAPs at the time I last tried to use it. He knows of the problem, but has other things nearer and dearer to his heart to get working. And it's a justifiable reason.

By the way, how hard is it to reinstall Pro?

[Pugsy]

By the way, how hard is it to reinstall Pro?

Depends on how cleanly it uninstalls. If the second install finds anything leftover to make it think Pro is already on it you will get a message "Pro is already installed" and it will shut you down. I had it happen to me with my first install of Pro. I messed up the Password thing and uninstalled Pro and tried it again. I did not run a good cleaner program to get rid of any leftover fragments. Didn't think of it at the time. I got around it by choosing Advanced install instead of the standard install. I made a minor file name change to make it a custom install and it then did complete the install.

[robysue]

Well, the ghosts of Richard Nixon and Rose Mary Woods appeared again last night: But this time there's a whopping hour-long gap in the wave form in SH that shows up in Encore Viewer's pressure and leak lines and a shorter one. (I'm locked out of my Encore Pro until I reinstall, so I don't know what its wave form would reveal.) Again, the wave form just peters out in what looks like a very long. but unflagged, apnea/hypopnea with plenty of PP. It starts back up briefly for a minute or two---with the wave form still looking like a severe hypopnea or a not quite flat apnea that's not flagged, followed by another gap. It ends for good at a time where I did wake up and turn the machine off and on---I think because I thought I had an inverted pillow cone---even though the set of pillows I'm using has only been used a grand total of 3 or 4 times. I do remember poking at the pillow cone for a bit somewhere in the middle of the night. There's a similar minute-long gap at 7:08--7:09 following an exceptionally long flagged apnea, but this time where the wave form picks up, the breathing pattern is my normal, very regular sleep breathing pattern with no evidence of me being awake. I did wake up about 20 minutes later when the alarm went off at 7:30ish.


The patterns of usage data in Encore Viewer---that page that we all largely disregard in Encore View reports because we know when we slept with the machine each day---has a big, black nasty bar in the gap---but there's no big black nasty bar in the leak line. And in going back through the data, there was a similar visit from the ghosts of RN+RMW back on Sept. 3 (A seventy-five minute gap that I think I decided not to worry about unless it happened again because we were visiting relatives at that time).

I've also discovered that the two days in July where the data won't load into SH for some reason also have these same "black bars" on the usage page in Encore Viewer with 10 minute gaps in the two times listed. And 7-10 minute gaps in the the leak line or pressure curve.

And for those who want to troubleshoot the issue:

1. Auto OFF is turned OFF on my machine.
2. Auto ON is turned OFF on my machine.
3. I have never---in one solid year of CPAPing---woken up with my mask off. Once, back the night of Dec. 31-Jan 10---the first time I took Ambien---there was evidence in the leak graph that I took the mask off for about a 20 minute period and then put the mask back on (very badly) before waking up due to a pretty massive leak for me. Notably---when I did consciously wake up that night, I had the mask on my face. I wrote about that experience here (towards bottom of page 3) and here

I'm calling the DME today just as soon as I get out of class. It looks like I've got bum machine number 2.

And for those keeping track of such things, this BiPAP was manufactured in April 2011 and is one of the "newer" System One machines. *sigh*

[Pugsy]

I think a call to the DME is in order. I would be doing the same thing. Black bars..no breathing detected isn't it?
If you were a newbie we might blame it on taking the mask of but you have been at it long enough to know.
The sensors may be messed up.

Do you have your machine set to turn off if no breathing detect or to continue blowing?

I have mine set to turn off. I know a lot of people want to keep it blowing so the air blowing sounds might wake them up but I want to see for sure if maybe the aliens have messed with things. So I want to see if the machine turned off by the breaks in data should I perhaps remove mask during the night and not realize it, which I have done. I have seen as much as an hour break and wake up with mask on. Either I took it off and then put it back on and don't remember it...which is possible or I slept through a power outage and the Auto on kicked the machine back on with the return of power.

I have Auto On ... On machine turns on when breathing is detected.
And I have Auto Off...On so it will stop blowing when no breathing is detected. I can't rely on the alarm beeps..too faint to wake me up.