Second Night, the Rest of My Life to Go

Well, it looks like I'm going to be one of those disgusting folks who have wonderful results from day 1 (or should that be night 1?).

Last night, after watching American Idol, the bed called me loud and clear for night 2 of being a hose-head. At about 8 PM, went in, lay down and read for about 45 minutes, then put on my full face mask and fired up the 420G. In about 15 minutes, I was dozing. When the ramp went from 8 to 16, I was briefly aware of the increase, but that was about it. I tried using a band-aid over the bridge of my nose to keep from getting a red mark, but it caused leaking of the nosepiece. So, no bandaid. I have some paper tape that I'm planning on trying tonight. Another thing I tried differently was to loosen the mask before going to sleep. It felt more comfortable, but when the ramp went to 16, it started leaking. After minor tightening, I was back to sleep. There were 4 or 5 times I briefly woke to the sound of leaks, but adjusting head position or rolling over onto my other side solved the problem (I'm a side sleeper). At 5:15 AM on the dot, I awoke without the alarm (which is set for 5:17AM), rested, refreshed and relaxed. This is a feeling I have not had in a long LONG time! I sure wish there was some magic way I could give those of you here who are having problems the immediate results I seem to be getting! Hopefully they will continue.

Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I didn't drop off into a nap during the morning at work. Sorry to say, the afternoon nap is still happened. Also, because the first night was so noisy due to the mask leaks and my "snarfling" and was so "busy" due to my thrashing around, my sweetie has spent the last 2 nights sleeping in the living room. She did say this morning, though, that the sounds were nowhere near as bad as night 1, so hopefully things are improving on these fronts. I told her the thrashing and snarfling were probably due to dreams in REM rebound from the sleep deficit of the last 5 years or so. I sure hope so and that they'll be gone in a short time.

Oh, two things I've noticed that I haven't seen anyone talk about here....1) it's hard to yawn with the mask and CPAP on and the CPAP at pressure and 2) sneezing while the mask is on and the CPAP is at pressure darn near blows your eardrums out! LOL

More tomorrow, if anyone is interested.

Congrats TXKajun,

You are echoing my results so far just about exactly. I have been "on the hose" since 01/03/05, and have had nearly the same results. Although, I have had some bad nights mixed in there. My wife hasn't moved to the living room yet. Like you, I started to dream again, ain't that fun.
Had an appt. with my sleep doc. late last month, and told him about dreaming again, he said "Good, it must be working".

Enuf of my rambling, sleep well and we'll that this thing under control !!

I would like to echo your results as well, if I may? I have been on cpap now since 2/3/05 and have been getting anywhere from 5 - 7 hours of sleep. Mostly 7 hours! Like you said earlier, I have cut out the morning nap sessions.... Yeah!! I do get sleepy at around 8 or 9pm now, but that's not too bad! Atleast I am not tired all day long! I actually feel like a real person again!!

I can't wait to be able to have all my energy back so that maybe I can find time in my life to do more. I feel like the day is much longer now, since I am not sleeping through it!

Good Luck to the rest of you, I was scared at first that I wouldn't be getting the sleep, and thought it was just a fluke that I was able to sleep the first night 5 hours and the 2nd night for 7 hours..... Now, almost 2 weeks later, I am actually getting 7 hours of sleep each night before I take my mask off. I pull it off at 5:30am, so that I can sleep on my tummy for awhile before actually having to wake up at 6:30am!

With my mask on, I can't seem to sleep on my side... I sleep on my back... but that's ok, my carpotunnel seems to have gone away too! Now that I am sleeping on my back on not on my side with my hand under my pillow, I don't seem to have that tingling/numb feeling in my hands any more. I have slept with my wrist braces on for about a week now.... It feels great! Ok, so I sleep with a mask... atleast I don't have to sleep with braces on my wrist!! The first few nights I would have been the worst date anyone would want to sleep with! Could you imagine seeing someone with not only a mask, but wrist braces too? It was a riot! I felt like a boxer!!!

Oh well... sleep well everyone!! Talk to you all on another topic!!