Feeling like you have to remember to breathe upon waking up?

Anyone else have this issue? I'm on my fifth day of CPAP / ASV for Apnea / Central Apnea. It's helping, and people on here say my SleepyHead stats look great. Apparently I'm doing better on the machine than most people do at first. I'm sleeping at least 7 solid hours, lowering AHI (from 145 untreated down to less than two), and feeling better during the day.

But when I first wake up, for the first five or ten minutes awake, I literally feel like I have to manually remember to breathe. It doesn't feel dangerous, like doesn't feel like if I ignored it I would stop breathing, but it's odd. Anyone else feel this way? Is this normal? (If you answer, please let me know if you have Central apnea as well as apnea. Thanks!)

I am in the process of slowly tapering off presnisone, which does make me feel weak. Also got put on blood pressure meds recently.

MWD

You are just starting out, getting used to new sensations. I think I had it once or twice; but not for a long time.
IMO, not dangerous, but take notes. It should not happen very often, but tell your doctor if it is frequent,
producing notes to show when.

chunkyfrog wrote:You are just starting out, getting used to new sensations. I think I had it once or twice; but not for a long time.
IMO, not dangerous, but take notes. It should not happen very often, but tell your doctor if it is frequent,
producing notes to show when.

Thank you!

yeah, it happens every morning.
I'll tell my doctor.

MWD

I think you may have a harder time than some when trying to get your therapy set up right. You have (and had) so many other issues and are taking so many meds that it may be hard to sort things out so that they're not fighting each other and some actually help. Your asthma is quite a problem and you need a pulmonologist who's also well up on apnea and Cpap... they're out there, but not always easy to find.

Julie wrote:I think you may have a harder time than some when trying to get your therapy set up right. You have (and had) so many other issues and are taking so many meds that it may be hard to sort things out so that they're not fighting each other and some actually help. Your asthma is quite a problem and you need a pulmonologist who's also well up on apnea and Cpap... they're out there, but not always easy to find.

Thank you, Julie.

My asthma is actually under control compared to six months ago. This summer I broke a rib coughing, I barely cough now, except a few minutes when waking up on CPAP.

My pulmonologist is great, and there's a guy in his office (who will actually be my doctor in a few months when my doctor moves), who is a pulmonologist and sleep specialist, and very very good. And my current pulmonologist consults with the partner on things.

But yeah, I have so many conditions it's harder than it could be otherwise. Also, no doctor has yet been able to determine a CAUSE, of why at 51 this all hit me at once. I'm actually thinking the GERD and the Apnea may be at the root of a lot of it. I should know soonish. Dealing with GERD helped a lot overnight.

Mainly, getting off the prednisone is needed. That stuff is horrible. And kicking it is harder than kicking heroin. And more dangerous. You have to taper of prednisone, going cold turkey can literally kill you, and even tapering off can be hellish. I'm down from 30 mg a day to 25 mg a day over the past two weeks, and already feeling the negative effects.

MWD