air pillows nightmares and feelings of suffocation.

I am new to this forum. I have been on the "monster" for about 6 weeks now. I am frustrated and sometimes angry at the air pillows to the point of throwing them off me.
I need to be drugged to tolerate that air pressure and even then I only wear it for 4-5 hours on a good night. Sometimes I have dreams of suffocation when a nostril has a leak in the sleep time, or I'm drowning only to see that the moisture level is too high.
I do notice a positive increase of energy and alertness after a good night of breathing so I want to overcome this. Any advice or ideas to help me with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Hello and welcome to the Forum. What you are experiencing is nothing we haven't heard before, and we can help if you give us some information to go on. What machine and mask are you using? Pressure(s)? Heated hose? It's late so you may not get replies until tomorrow. In the meantime, many of your questions can be answered by reading here... you'll find a wealth of info on these pages.

It could be a need to change pressure or possibly a different mask...We need information on your equipment and data from Sleepyhead to make a recommendation......https://sleep.tnet.com/equipment

Nasal Pillows on Respironics machines require a special pressure setting called "X" or something to that effect. When I used a nasal pillow (first mask used) the machine was set to 5x, which is super high speed air inflow. It is very disturbing. You might try a full face mask or even a nasal which the X factor can be turned off and air will be delivered more gently . But do fill out your machine particulars and mask and humidifier info and we will be able to help you.

Suenyo wrote:Nasal Pillows on Respironics machines require a special pressure setting called "X" or something to that effect. When I used a nasal pillow (first mask used) the machine was set to 5x, which is super high speed air inflow. It is very disturbing. You might try a full face mask or even a nasal which the X factor can be turned off and air will be delivered more gently

unfortunately, this isn't actually factual.

lagartija wrote:I am new to this forum. I have been on the "monster" for about 6 weeks now. I am frustrated and sometimes angry at the air pillows to the point of throwing them off me.
I need to be drugged to tolerate that air pressure and even then I only wear it for 4-5 hours on a good night. Sometimes I have dreams of suffocation when a nostril has a leak in the sleep time, or I'm drowning only to see that the moisture level is too high.
I do notice a positive increase of energy and alertness after a good night of breathing so I want to overcome this. Any advice or ideas to help me with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I'm still pretty new to this, but am willing to share my experiences as they are fresh in memory. I believe the key is paying close attention to your symptoms. When I was doing my titration test I started with the nasal pillows. I really wanted them to work. I was OK on my back but if I rolled to my side I would wake in about 30 minutes with a headache from hypoxia. I figured out that any mask that touches the top or bridge of my nose closed off my airway too much to breath. I then tried a full face mask, that I didn't like and it promoted me to mouth breath. The nurse I had told me to try the dreamwear. I love it. During fitting with my DME it seemed great. The first night I wore it I could not go to sleep for hours as I felt like I was not getting enough air. When I woke in the morning I felt fine. On reviewing the sleep data the machines low limit was set to 5cm, but the whole night the machine ran above 8cm and up to 19cm. The second night the machine started at 5cm again, so I reprogramed my lower limit to 7 to avoid the feeling of suffocating. Now I go to sleep quickly, and sleep great.

The same idea was used to find out my cleaning frequency. My mask fits good and works great until it gets oily and slippery, then it slips off my nose and leaks a lot. With a clean face before bed, I only have to clean my mask every few days to keep it from being slippery. Now I can touch it and see if it need cleaning before I put it on at night.

The point of this is to find the delta between your good and bad days, or good and bad hours. Then make more good hours and days.

Hope this helps and you find the right combination for you.