power outage at night?

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gdgiles
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power outage at night?

Post by gdgiles » Sat Jul 19, 2014 11:35 am

Just curious if anyone here has been through a power outage at night while on CPAP. I guess it's designed so you can still breathe, especially with a pillow, but I'd bet a full mask would be kind of scary.

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palerider
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Re: power outage at night?

Post by palerider » Sat Jul 19, 2014 11:38 am

ffm have a flappy bit that covers a fairly large hole when the machine is blowing, when the machine cuts off, the anti asphyxia valve opens, and you can get fresh air through there.

bad for bidness if your customers suffocate to death during the night.

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gdgiles
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Re: power outage at night?

Post by gdgiles » Sat Jul 19, 2014 11:52 am

ah! I was wondering about that.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by Guest » Sat Jul 19, 2014 1:27 pm

gdgiles wrote:Just curious if anyone here has been through a power outage at night while on CPAP. I guess it's designed so you can still breathe, especially with a pillow, but I'd bet a full mask would be kind of scary.
Normally you will wakeup right after the power goes out no matter which mask.

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palerider
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Re: power outage at night?

Post by palerider » Sat Jul 19, 2014 1:34 pm

Guest wrote:
gdgiles wrote:Just curious if anyone here has been through a power outage at night while on CPAP. I guess it's designed so you can still breathe, especially with a pillow, but I'd bet a full mask would be kind of scary.
Normally you will wakeup right after the power goes out no matter which mask.
disinformation, as usual.

some people, my bedmate for instance, can sleep through nearly anything, power went out the other day, kept right on snoozing with their p10. I plucked it off, our houseguest came in, "waah, the powers out" "what do you want me to do about it?" meanwhile, bedmate is sleepily putting mask BACK on...

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by Guest » Sat Jul 19, 2014 1:44 pm

palerider wrote:
Guest wrote:
gdgiles wrote:Just curious if anyone here has been through a power outage at night while on CPAP. I guess it's designed so you can still breathe, especially with a pillow, but I'd bet a full mask would be kind of scary.
Normally you will wakeup right after the power goes out no matter which mask.
disinformation, as usual.

some people, my bedmate for instance, can sleep through nearly anything, power went out the other day, kept right on snoozing with their p10. I plucked it off, our houseguest came in, "waah, the powers out" "what do you want me to do about it?" meanwhile, bedmate is sleepily putting mask BACK on...
Some people are NOT in the normal range.

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archangle
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Re: power outage at night?

Post by archangle » Sat Jul 19, 2014 2:47 pm

gdgiles wrote:Just curious if anyone here has been through a power outage at night while on CPAP. I guess it's designed so you can still breathe, especially with a pillow, but I'd bet a full mask would be kind of scary.
The standard answer seems to be that if the power goes out and you start rebreathing stale air through a nasal mask, you'll open your mouth and breathe that way.

I'm not completely convinced that is true, but it seems to be what the medical community thinks. The logic seems to be that if your nose clogs up at night, you will open your mouth to breathe. What makes mes skeptical is that the situation under CPAP is different. If the nose clogs up, you can't breathe.

If the CPAP machine stops, you can still inhale and exhale, but most of the air you exhale goes up the hose and then you inhale it back, with the CO2 going up and O2 going down. In industrial settings, people sometimes die in enclosed spaces because of low O2 and they never notice anything is wrong before losing consciousness.

WIth a full face mask, it has an anti-asphyxia valve that will let fresh air come in and out of the mask even with no air pressure.

Most, but not all, CPAPers who have had their machine shut down during the night do wake up pretty quickly.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by HoseCrusher » Sat Jul 19, 2014 2:49 pm

I don't know what others do, but I wake up when the power goes out... and when the hose comes off the machine.

A couple of nights ago I must have been overly active in bed and I gradually slumbered to a minimal state of wakefulness wondering what the whooshing sound was and why my mask seemed to be out of position. I finally woke up and realized that my main hose had become detached from the machine. Put the hose back on and drifted back to a wonderful restful sleep.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by JDS74 » Sat Jul 19, 2014 3:30 pm

Several years ago, I had a power loss because the plug came out of the wall.
I didn't wake up for 45 minutes or so the data recorded.
The anti-asphyxia worked just fine for me.
I did notice when I woke up that breathing was more difficult.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by archangle » Sat Jul 19, 2014 5:41 pm

Just try it. At some time, when there's someone else around watching you, just unplug the CPAP power and put it on and get a feeling for how you feel if the power goes off.

Have someone around watching just in case you actually do have some sort of suffocation problem.

BTW, your Aloha nasal pillow mask does NOT have an anti-asphyxia valve. It's assumed you'll open your mouth before you suffocate.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by palerider » Sat Jul 19, 2014 6:03 pm

archangle wrote:Just try it. At some time, when there's someone else around watching you, just unplug the CPAP power and put it on and get a feeling for how you feel if the power goes off.

Have someone around watching just in case you actually do have some sort of suffocation problem.
someone you trust

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by Guest » Sat Jul 19, 2014 6:30 pm

I've plugged my machine into a surge protector that has a built in battery backup--the kind often sold for the protection of computers. It will power the cpap machine through short outages and it beeps while on battery, enough of a noise to alert me.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by ShelaghDB » Sat Jul 19, 2014 7:04 pm

Just curious if anyone here has been through a power outage at night while on CPAP. I guess it's designed so you can still breathe, especially with a pillow, but I'd bet a full mask would be kind of scary

i use a FF mask and before i started using the nasal rinse at night time, every single night I was getting stuffed up, for 2 months. Trust me, when you can't breathe, you have the amazing ability deep in your sleep to simply lift up the velcro straps over the plastic thingie, and very well I may add. You even take the full mask off and lay it down on your chest, all the while without any recollection of doing so but there it is each morning when you wake up, staring right at you

The first 2-3 times you do this, you won't be aware of yourself doing it although you will have a vague memory of having done it the next morning. After the 2-3rd time you master it deep in your sleep and have NO recall the next day.

Don't worry, even if the power went off, I promise you that you will just take it off in your sleep and likely not even be aware you are doing so and I don't mean ripping if off either, i mean, rather gently and neatly.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by SleepyToo2 » Sat Jul 19, 2014 8:01 pm

I do wake up - probably fairly quickly - when the power goes out. I set up my back-up battery, and head back to the land of nod. If I know there is a high risk of a power outage, I will sometimes have everything set up ready to go, but I confess I haven't always been that prepared! Whatever, I am still here to tell the tale. Yes, it does become more difficult to breathe with pillows, but the mouth soon opens to compensate.

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Re: power outage at night?

Post by chunkyfrog » Sat Jul 19, 2014 8:13 pm

I also wake up quickly when the power goes out;
but one time I forgot to turn the machine on--and didn't notice until 5 hours later.
--with a Comfortgel full face mask--that's one good anti-asphyxia valve!

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