My First Week of APAP Treatment

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stealth2600
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My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by stealth2600 » Wed Mar 04, 2015 9:09 am

3-3-2015

Hey Everyone,

I'm new to the forums and I just completed my first APAP therapy last night. I am using a Resmed AirSense 10 AutoSet with a Philip Wisp Nasal Mask. The first night went OK, better than I expected. I found it very difficult to get comfortable with all of the tubing and the nasal mask. I am very used to sleeping on my stomach and I found that to be difficult to do with the nasal mask on. I also woke up with some red spots on the bridge of my nose, and on the right side of my face next to my nose. I am assuming this probably occurred because I had my mask on to tight, and I am going to try and readjust it tonight to see if that helps. Any advice from others if much appreciated too!

Now on to the positives. According to my sleep report, I did a pretty good job for a first night. I scored a 95/100 on the myAir dashboard application. Supposedly I slept 7 hours and 21 minutes, but I think it was more like five hours. My mask seal seemed to be good at 19/20 rating, 1.3 events per hour (during my sleep study, I was getting between 25-30) however my Mask On/Off only came in at 1/5. I am not sure why that occurred, does anyone has any idea?

Thanks for all the help/support everyone. I'm feeling pretty tired today, more tired than usual. I have a feeling it might be because I got "real" sleep for the first time in who knows how long. Anyways, I'm going to stick with this, I know its going to get easier as the days go on.


3-4-2015

Hey Guys!

Last night went a little better than my first night. I still got about 5 hours of sleep, but I felt a lot more comfortable. I attribute that to fiddling around with my AirSense a little, ie. turning on EPR to a level of 2. I found that I was able to breath much more easily. Unfortunately, I am still getting red marks on the right side of my nose despite loosening my mask up a lot last night, in fact, I can't loosen it much more. My Airsense score improved today to 98/100, and my Event Per Hour Descreased to .2. The mask on/off rating also improved to 4/5, I attribute that to not playing around with the machine at all yesterday, I'm pretty sure that's why I got the 1/5 the night before.

One more "comfort" issue I want to get sorted out tonight is the minimum pressure. My prescription is for a range of 4-20cm, which I feel is very broad, especially on the minimum pressure side. When my machine is running at 4.0 it feels very difficult to breath, its feels like I'm breathing through a straw. Does anyone think changing the minimum pressure to 6.0 or 7.0 will help at all? I appreciate all the advice and support, I think I'm finally starting to understand PAP treatment a little better!

3-5-2015

Hola!

So last night was about the same as the other nights. I got about 5 hours of sleep again, but I'm feeling a little more rested today. Per the advice of some wonderful individuals on the forums, I increased my min pressure to 6.0 and found that much more comfortable to breath. I also like the EPR feature so much that I upped that to level 3. I also increased my humidity from 4 to 5. I did have some issues with mask leak last night, I noticed an increase from 10L/M the previous night to 12L/M. I think I may have loosened my mask up to much in an effort to find more comfort, I'll try tightening it up a little more tonight. I know its good to minimize mask leak whenever possible, but what is a good range to strive for? Thanks Everyone for the help and support!

3-6-2015

Good Morning!

I'm feeling pretty refresh this morning, I got about 8 hours of sleep using my APAP last night. I've found that I can't stay in bed any longer than 8 hours now. I ALWAYS seem to wake up about 5 hours into my treatment, and its pretty difficult to fall back asleep because I'm already feeling fairly rested. I was able to get back to sleep for the first time last night though. I did attempt to tighten up my mask last night, but I still got about 12L/min mask leak. I'm finding that occasionally there is a small leak that occurs when I'm lying on my side and try to move my head around a little. I don't really want to tighten the mask up anymore though for fear of sores/bruising. I also just downloaded sleepyhead this morning so that I can take a better look at my AHI and mask leak. Maybe if I post up some of the graphs, you guys can help me to analyze them? Thanks again for everything, this community is amazing!

3-7-2015

Hello,

I'm feeling a little groggy this morning. I had a hard time sleeping last night in general because I kept having to use the rest room. I followed the advice of a couple of veterans here on the forums and increased my min pressure to 7.0 last night and I found that to be pretty comfortable. I also tried to loosen my mask up quite a bit to help with the red lines I have been getting. I did observe a substantial increase in leak though, so I think I may have loosened the headgear up to much. On a positive note, the red lines aren't to bad this morning, really its just on the bridge of my nose and its a lot less red than in previous days. I feel like I'm still searching for my sweet spot with this mask, but if it doesn't workout by Tuesday (one week of use) I'm going to talk to my DME about swapping it out for something else since I have one month to do exchanges. Any advice with regards to red lines and proper mask fit is greatly appreciated! I will post up my sleep head results from last night for you all give me some feedback on. Thanks for all the help, have a great day!

3-8-2015

Happy Monday!

I had pretty good sleep last evening. I was able to sleep for 7 hours straight without interruption. I still haven't had any "dreams", but I'm hoping those will eventually return. I can't even remember the last time I had a dream its been so long. I think I finally found the sweet spot with my mask. The red lines I've been complaining about were barely visible this morning and had totally faded away within a few hours. I reviewed my Sleepyhead numbers this morning and it looks like I also resolved most of my mask leak. I will post my statistics below, please feel free to comment and offer advice. This is a great community, thanks for all the help everyone!!

3-9-2015
I slept pretty much the same last night, though I only got about 6 hours of sleep. Overall, I feel like I'm finally starting to get the hang of PAP treatment. I had another good night with my mask, very slight red marks this morning and they have mostly faded away within the 2 hours since I woke up. My Sleepyhead data looked pretty good again too, though I observed a slight rise in AHI and mask leak. Thanks again to everyone out there who has helped me on this journey, this forum rocks!

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Last edited by stealth2600 on Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:09 am, edited 12 times in total.

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souffoue
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Re: My First Night of APAP Treatment

Post by souffoue » Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:29 pm

Sounds like a great first night. I'm a new CPAP user (since last firday). I think my first night was my best night oddly enough. haha
Last night I woke up with my left ear horribly plugged (still plugged and driving me crazy). Good luck to you!!

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stealth2600
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Re: My First Night of APAP Treatment

Post by stealth2600 » Thu Mar 05, 2015 8:23 am

souffoue wrote:Sounds like a great first night. I'm a new CPAP user (since last firday). I think my first night was my best night oddly enough. haha
Last night I woke up with my left ear horribly plugged (still plugged and driving me crazy). Good luck to you!!
Hey Souffoue,

Thanks for the encouragement. I hope your ear is feeling better this morning and that you had a better night of sleep. PAP treatment definitely is taking me some time to get used too, but I'm committed to making it work no matter what! Keep it up!

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OkyDoky
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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by OkyDoky » Thu Mar 05, 2015 9:00 am

Many of us feel like it is difficult to breathe at 4 and increasing to 6 will probably help. I think your next step should be to get the software that allows you to see what that auto pressure is doing. Check out these sites for help on downloading Sleepyhead. https://sleep.tnet.com/resources/sleepyhead and viewtopic/t88983/Pugsys-PointersSleepyH ... Hints.html then ask if you have other questions.
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stealth2600
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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by stealth2600 » Thu Mar 05, 2015 9:43 am

OkyDoky wrote:Many of us feel like it is difficult to breathe at 4 and increasing to 6 will probably help. I think your next step should be to get the software that allows you to see what that auto pressure is doing. Check out these sites for help on downloading Sleepyhead. https://sleep.tnet.com/resources/sleepyhead and viewtopic/t88983/Pugsys-PointersSleepyH ... Hints.html then ask if you have other questions.
Hi OkyDoky,

Thanks for the information. I downloaded the ResScan software (I believe Sleepyhead still doesn't support the ResMed Airsense 10 Autoset) last night and I tried to take a look at my data. I need to do some reading so that I can understand what the different graphs etc. actually mean. Being that I also only have 2 days of data, I imagine I might want to wait on doing any sort of analysis until I have a larger data set. What are your recommendations with this? Thanks for the help/reply, I greatly appreciate it!

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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by OkyDoky » Thu Mar 05, 2015 9:53 am

I do believe many users of the Airsense 10 are using the latest Sleepyhead. Maybe someone else will verify this.
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TangledHose
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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by TangledHose » Thu Mar 05, 2015 9:56 am

Use Sleepyhead, it's tons easier than Rescan and much better for you to interperate the data!

The latest version works with the Airsense machines......there is a link to it in my signature line down below.

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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by Pugsy » Thu Mar 05, 2015 10:02 am

SleepyHead didn't work with the new AirSense initially but Mark quickly updated the latest version so that it will work with the new AirSense machines. Perhaps you saw one of the very first posts about SH compatibility when they were first released. I think it was maybe 2 weeks that SleepyHead wasn't compatible until the release of the 0.9.8-1 Beta testing version.

You might take a stroll through the ResScan guide as I think it may help explain what you are seeing
http://www.apneaboard.com/ResScan_Inter ... -Guide.pdf

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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by stealth2600 » Thu Mar 05, 2015 10:11 am

Great, thanks everyone! I will download Sleepyhead tonight and give it a try. I think I may have read an older post and got confused. =)

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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by stealth2600 » Sat Mar 07, 2015 8:32 am

Hey everyone, I downloaded sleepyhead this morning and imported my data into it. I'm still reading over the manual to try and understand how to use this wonderful tool. Anyways, here's my results from last night, can anyone help me analyze this please?

Image


Image

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OkyDoky
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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by OkyDoky » Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:24 am

Sounds and looks like you are doing good. On the screen shot what is typically requested is the daily page,
detail tab on the left, you can turn off the calendar for more room,
then on the right
event flags,
flow,
pressure,
leaks,
snores
flow limitations. resize and drag as needed.

On yours the flow is missing and the AHI and Mask pressure are not needed because they would be reflected in your events and pressure.
Your AHI looks very good and no events were recorded until the 6:20 hour. Before I opened it up into another window I thought you must not have turned graph events on in Sleepyhead Your leaks are not bad and are probably responding to the pressure increases and movement. If you want to try mask liners such as Padacheek or Remzzz this might help especially if the leaks are waking you up. Your pressure does increase pretty quickly and doesn't go back down to the the 6 level so if you are comfortable with it I think increasing the minimum level to 7 might help with your EPR on 3.
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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by Pugsy » Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:53 am

Overall you look good on paper and nothing that you have shown above screams out "fix me".
Only 4 days of therapy though so not really very long at all.
Seems to show a lot of rather significant pressure changes throughout the night...probably in response to flow limitations (next time you can include that graph and omit the AHI and mask pressure graphs as OkyDoky has suggested.

How are you sleeping? Waking often or sleeping soundly for the most part? If waking often, any idea why?
Do you like EPR at 3 better than the other EPR settings that you tried?

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stealth2600
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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by stealth2600 » Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:12 am

OkyDoky wrote:Sounds and looks like you are doing good. On the screen shot what is typically requested is the daily page,
detail tab on the left, you can turn off the calendar for more room,
then on the right
event flags,
flow,
pressure,
leaks,
snores
flow limitations. resize and drag as needed.

On yours the flow is missing and the AHI and Mask pressure are not needed because they would be reflected in your events and pressure.
Your AHI looks very good and no events were recorded until the 6:20 hour. Before I opened it up into another window I thought you must not have turned graph events on in Sleepyhead Your leaks are not bad and are probably responding to the pressure increases and movement. If you want to try mask liners such as Padacheek or Remzzz this might help especially if the leaks are waking you up. Your pressure does increase pretty quickly and doesn't go back down to the the 6 level so if you are comfortable with it I think increasing the minimum level to 7 might help with your EPR on 3.
Hi OkyDoky,

Thank you so much for the feedback. I have edited my previous post to include a screenshot of my data in the manner you have outlined. I greatly appreciate the information and your thoughts! I went ahead and upped my machine to a min pressure of 7.0, I'll give that a try tonight and let you know how it goes. The mask leaks actually aren't bugging me at all, occasionally if I'm awake and moving around I can hear air for a second or two. Thank you so much, you've been a huge help!

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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by stealth2600 » Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:16 am

Pugsy wrote:Overall you look good on paper and nothing that you have shown above screams out "fix me".
Only 4 days of therapy though so not really very long at all.
Seems to show a lot of rather significant pressure changes throughout the night...probably in response to flow limitations (next time you can include that graph and omit the AHI and mask pressure graphs as OkyDoky has suggested.

How are you sleeping? Waking often or sleeping soundly for the most part? If waking often, any idea why?
Do you like EPR at 3 better than the other EPR settings that you tried?
Hi Pugsy,

Thanks you so much for the response! I have edited my previous post and included a new graph illustrating the information that OkyDoky told me I should have. I am sleeping pretty good, all four night have fallen asleep around 11:45pm and slept without interruption until about 5/5:15AM. I am having trouble getting back to sleep at 5:15AM, but that's mostly because I feel pretty rested and awake. I have tried my EPR on 2 and 3, and I personally have found the EPR at 3 is most comfortable for me. OkyDoky has suggested I try increasing my min pressure to 7.0 tonight to help compliment my EPR value of 3. I am going to give this a try and let you all know how I do tomorrow. One outstanding issue I'm having still is with my mask. I can't seem to find the sweet spot between "snug" and "to tight". I have some red marks on the bridge and sides of my nose this morning. They are not painful and appear to be slowly fading away since I've woken up. I've tried applying some lotion to help sooth the irritation a little. Any suggestion on what I might be able to try to resolve this? Thanks for all your help, this entire community rocks!

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Re: My First Week of APAP Treatment

Post by OkyDoky » Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:24 am

Your graphs look good but go ahead and leave the details on the left, they have a lot of useful info. You can turn off the calendar by clicking on the little triangle by the date. Also the pie graph doesn't really give alot of info so you can turn it off by going into the file- preferences- appearance and uncheck show event breakdown pie chart.
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