help interpreting what happened here?

Had this happen last night and I'm not quite sure what was happening here. Any opinions? Was it just me waking up and adjusting or what do you guys/gals with a little more experience with sleepyhead think?

One result does not a trend make. Give it a couple days and watch it.

If you fell asleep pretty much immediately (did you, as far as you know?), you could have reached REM by that time, when all the fun stuff happens. But if you've never seen this kind of action before, it's hard to know what's happening here. Best to see if it keeps happening as Krelvin said.

Other things to think about - Did you start any new meds? Some of them can affect dreaming considerably. Drink more than usual, have a different kind of day? Catch a cold or get sick?

it happened several times that night, where it looks like my breathing got erratic and i had multiple episodes of apnea back to back to back. no new meds, no drinking that night at all, no sickness either. I did wake up in the middle of that night find that I not only took off my mask, but hung it up on my bed post like i normally do in the morning. and i have zero recollection of doing that at all. The first two weeks i seemed liked i was doing great. then the last week I've all kinds of episodes like this and taking my mask off in the middle of night without remembering do so.

When we see little clusters of OAs or hyponeas like that the pressure is not quite optimal for whatever is going on during that time frame. It's obviously good enough for the other parts of the night so we figure something has changed. The 2 most common causes of needing more pressure are either REM stage sleep or supine sleeping.
So I suspect you either were in REM stage sleep or you rolled over onto your back and for either it is not uncommon at all to need higher pressures.

Goodness. I've heard of ripping off the mask in the middle of the night for various reasons, but carefully hanging it up isn't usually part of that picture. Do you have a decent doc? I'd mention that to him/her. Maybe other things are happening now that the actual apnea is better controlled.

Yeah I'm going back to my doc on friday. I'm gonna bring my whole setup in. So far I'm gonna try to get the heated tube, switch my nose mask for a pillow mask, and bring up the problems I've had with taking the mask off the last week. How do docs respond if you tell them about uploading your data to sleepyhead and looking at that kind of raw data vs just the summary info? Some docs seem to be slightly annoyed when you don't just take their word for it and start asking lots of questions.

Something strange is happening from a mechanical standpoint, not just in your breathing. The fact that the leak rate varies indicates something is happening other than air going in and out of your lungs. Maybe some combination of leak around the mask, having your mouth open, etc. Whatever it is, it's fluctuating. Those big spikes up are some sort of a mechanical leak. I don't think you're actually inhaling 180 l/m.

Nothing in your actual breathing can affect the leak rate graph like that. Zoom out and show us the whole night's leak rate.

It looks a bit like maybe you're opening your mouth and breathing through it while closing off your nose with your soft palate, but that doesn't make sense of everything in that image, either.

In summary, I don't think it's your actual breathing.

As far as your question about your doctor, I think it depends on the doctor, and we just have to hunt until we get one that doesn't get defensive about that. After all, we are the ones trying to protect and improve our health. They've got no business being offended by that, right? You're not trying to tell them what to do; you're asking a perfectly reasonable question.

I told my doctor that I had SleepyHead. She said she'd like to see what I get. She even feels like she can use the pressure my BiPAP ASV is dishing out as a tool to judge the state of my asthma! I'm looking forward to showing her all the different things she can see about a patient's issues. One would like to think it would help if we show them a data piece, like you did, and ask, What happened here?

Obviously, without EEG input, it's hard to gauge sleep staging, to know, e.g., whether it was REM, or deep sleep, or waking or whatever. And if it's a disruptive enough issue, maybe it means going back to the lab for another study, to correlate that. But they went to med school to solve mysteries, right ? If they're not willing to work with you to do what needs to be done for your health, they're just not right for you.

heres a shot of the whole night.

and as for the doc, i kinda got the feeling that things kinda were a little "rushed" during the appt where i picked up my machine. he seemed like he might be a little dismissive as far as me looking at the kind of data and asking questions. we'll see though. i mean, i don't know what data gets transmitted back to them on a daily basis, if its just a summary like i can see on the myair website, or if they get it all. But being that i already drive 45 minutes from my base and its all under tricare, i don't know what options i have here if he doesn't seem to care address my concerns. oh well, if i piss him off maybe i can request a referral to another doc.

Quite a few people wake up in the morning, and find their machine turned off and the hose and mask neatly stored away and have no recollection.

I don't get any great revelations from the full night's data. You do need to fix those leaks, but they're not terribly bad.

That short interval you posted still looks to me like some sort of bogus "mechanical" condition like you were breathing through the mouth and had your nose blocked off.

How do you feel? Something weird is going on there, but I'm not sure it means that much in terms of how well your therapy is working.

Sort of a technical geeky note:

I find it interesting that your leak rate shows a "base" level of about 8 l/m. ResMed machines subtract out the base leak rate, so it's interesting that it's not zero. It also seems to settle out to different "base" leak rates, which is strange. Maybe some sort of vent blockage is occurring and it's confusing the machine about its intentional leak rate calculation.

The fact that your leak rate drops below this level is also interesting, like maybe you're blocking your exhaust vent part of the time. Does the airfit vent air all the way around the mask? It looks like it would be hard to block unless you buried your face into a pillow or something.