Kenny's CPAP Thread

[tattooyu]

I was debating resorting to mouth taping. I hate the idea. Can't cough, if my sinuses clog, can't breathe... I wake up with it coming off or can't get it off.
But on XPAP your therapy is lost when your mouth opens, and dry mouth is painfull!
Last week I started wearing nasal strips with my fx and my leak line is the best I have had in a year. Almost none last night. I dropped my pressure 1.0 cm the first night because with the strips it felt like the pressure was too high. 7 to 6.
If I am opening my mouth because I am not getting enough air through my nose, it makes more sense to me to open my nose rather than tape my mouth shut!
Nasal strips are way more comfortable that tape on my mouth!
YMMV, but it's working for me.
If I do a PSG again, I will wear nasal strips.

Maybe I'll try that. I might be due for a neti pot rinse (distilled water of course) anyway.

[Lizistired]

I use hot tap water in the neti, when I use it. From what I have read, the temps in the water heater plus the salt will kill the bacteria. I balance that with using a microwave to heat distilled water in a plastic neti-pot... No brain eating amoeba yet.

[tattooyu]

Well now I know why I've been feeling so poorly. Viewed my data in ResScan. Leaks up the wazoo. Not too many AI events but some longer ones (20 seconds, 16 seconds...)

Can any of you tell me what the hell happened here at 5 a.m.? My wife happened to be up and there was no power outage. I was NOT up.

[Lizistired]

That's strange. I think they blame it on aliens around here. You would think there would be some full blown apneas with your pressure dropping out completly.
What does your "Flow" and "Minute ventilation" look like for that time? You could have been fixing the leak, but that doesn't explain the pressure drop.

[tattooyu]

No idea how to get Flow and MV for my machine. Can I get that in ResScan? I can't use Sleepyhead with my S8 Autoset II either.

[Pugsy]

No idea how to get Flow and MV for my machine. Can I get that in ResScan? I can't use Sleepyhead with my S8 Autoset II either.

I don't think those data points are available from the S8.
They are on the S9 though. ResScan will show them if the machine will gather it.

[tattooyu]

Things are nearly back to normal. I think I was having a three-day gallbladder attack -- strange since I don't HAVE a GB -- but on Saturday I had a very bad BM reminiscent of when I still had my bad GB*. Once that was out of my system, I was nearly back to normal later that day.

I'm going to see the GI doc soon; waiting on my authorization. Something is not right in the biliary tract.

My hypotheses:

• Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction
• Post-cholecystectomy syndrome (Too much bile? Not enough?)

Leaks are still ranging from 0.1-0.2 L/s (6-12 L/min), but AI is under 2.0 (had AI = 0.0 this morning!), and I feel much, much more rested.

*NOTE: I never had gallstones originally; just a non-working gallbladder.

[tattooyu]

I think I've gotten my leaks under control. While I'm in desperate need of new nasal pillows (haven't gotten to Home Depot for o-rings yet), I think I was attaching my PAPcap slightly wrong. The instructions are to put the strap under the fleshy part of the chin, as opposed to the strap being like a cup over the chin proper. This, I was doing. However, I think I was placing the strap too far back, about an inch behind my chin, which 1) caused the need to REALLY crank the strap tight, 2) was causing deep, semi-permanent lines in my chin fat and 3) not sealing my lips enough.

I saw a photo on the "I triple dog dare you" thread of poppi2 wearing a PAPcap and noticed he has the strap fairly far forward on his chin. So, I decided to give it a try last night, albeit not quite that far forward, since I have a small chin.

Woke up this morning to the following numbers:

AHI: 1.5
AI: 0.0
HI: 1.5
Leak: 0.08 L/s | 4.8 L/min

I feel much better today!

[lazer]

... While I'm in desperate need of new nasal pillows (haven't gotten to Home Depot for o-rings yet),....

I forget now. What size O-rings to get from Home Depot for the Swift FX Medium nasal pillows?

[Pugsy]

I forget now. What size O-rings to get from Home Depot for the Swift FX Medium nasal pillows?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=76193&p=696113&hili ... gs#p696113

The O ring size is OD 13/16 by ID 9/16 by 1/8 . Danco #93 O ring

[tattooyu]

I forget now. What size O-rings to get from Home Depot for the Swift FX Medium nasal pillows?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=76193&p=696113&hili ... gs#p696113

The O ring size is OD 13/16 by ID 9/16 by 1/8 . Danco #93 O ring

My wife is picking up some o-rings at Orchard Supply right now, but they didn't have that size, which they said was kind of an odd size. What I had her get was OD 11/16 x ID 9/16 x 1/16. I will stack two of them to make 1/8". I'm thinking that as long as the inner diameter is the same, so that the neck of the pillow doesn't get pinched, the outer diameter isn't incredibly important, since the thickness will be supporting the pillow.

[tattooyu]

I'll be posting data on this thread again, because I can finally access it. I had a filter on my profile that I don't remember ever enabling limiting posts to the last six months (thank again, Julie!).

SleepyHead data upload! I hope I have all the useful graphs showing. If not, let me know, and I'll take new screenshots. I'm a little concerned about the centrals the last two nights (05-22-20114 and 05-23-2014). The big gap on the 22nd was me being woken up by Jonah (my son), and I wanted to catch another hour or so of sleep a bit later on.

Also, I donated to Jedimark for his amazing work on the SleepyHead software. Anyone else who uses the software should consider donating whatever they can.

Any feedback would be welcome. I'm actually feeling pretty good the last few days, but I'm tending to drag ass around 4 PM, and then I get a second wind about 5:30-6:00 PM. On to the data!

05-21-2014


05-22-2014.


05-23-2014


05-23-2014 - Centrals




05-23-2014 - Obstructives

[Pugsy]

Pressure graph is absent...so are the pressure statistics under the pie chart.
Which SleepyHead version are you using?

The centrals are nothing to be concerned with at all. They are only a problem if they are present in large numbers, disrupt sleep or cause large desats.
Remember some "centrals" are just a normal part of the sleep stage transition...like it's normal to have a few centrals at sleep onset.
Since the S9 doesn't know if you are awake or asleep it might flag an awake/semi awake breathing irregularity as some sort of apnea event. I once had about 45 minutes where I was awake (know for sure because I was battling extreme nausea) and the centrals were rampant during that time frame. It can happen.

Regardless of whether your "centrals" are the real deal or not...there simply aren't enough of them to worry about even if they were all the real deal in your situation.
You probably had something similar when using the S8...you just didn't know it because your S8 didn't offer the level of detail the S9 does.

[tattooyu]

When I enable the pressure graph, it never shows up, even if it's enabled at the bottom right. Mask pressure will show so I can turn that on.

Do you think the machine didn't respond to the OA's because they weren't preceded by a snore?

I'm using the latest beta version of SleepyHead on Windows 7 Professional (64-bit).

[Pugsy]

Which SH version specifically and build date?

From here
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sleepyh ... s/Testing/

Don't know why the machine didn't respond to the OA. It's possible the snore or flow reduction didn't trip the response or maybe the OA came out of the blue so fast that there wasn't time for much of a response.