Darn those aliens again

[Pugsy]

Those of you who know me will realize that I often just blame whacko, weird, off the wall unusual cpap reports to a visit from my alien friends. Sometimes crap happens and we just don't know why and it is so rare and so totally weird that we just can't come up with a plausible explanation and sometimes it just isn't worth the effort to try (at least not for me).

Well, the aliens must have had some fun with me last night because I had 30 minutes where things totally went to hell.
It would have been one of those nights that it might have been useful to have the pulse ox on but this is the first time in over a year that things went this whacko. I am not about to wear that darn thing every night for a year trying to catch another alien visit.
Now if this starts happening fairly often then maybe I will go dig it out of the drawer.

Approx 30 events in 30 minutes this time...OAs except for a couple of hyponeas and one lone CA. Starting at roughly 0:40.
The snores at the end of the night...those are unusual for me also. I have been using the BiPap Pro model 660 recently. I would suspect that if I had been using the BiPap Auto in auto adjusting mode that my pressures would have increased significantly in response to whatever happened. Some nights in auto mode the pressure varies only minimally and some nights I will have short periods where I push 20 cm.

SleepyHead report below as well as Encore report and a snippet of the waveform graph from Encore because it's impossible to get all of them to show up zoomed in on SH in one image.
So for your viewing enjoyment and to let you know that the aliens can visit anyone at anytime...take a peek.
And the report at the very bottom...what I had just a week prior. This ugly report is very atypical for me. Extremely rare.

[avi123]

[quote="Pugsy"]


Questions,

1) Leaks from the pillows mask? The large inverted "U" is it a mouth leak?
2) Why use a BiPAP for top pressure below 15 cm?
3) Those VS2, what kind of snoring are they:

"There are two types of snoring and are distinguished, depending on
the localization of their origin. The first type of snoring,
"velar snoring", is produced by the vibration of all the
structures of the soft palate, i.e. the velum, the anterior
and posterior arches of the tonsils and the uvula. Velar
snoring results from a vibration of the soft palate cre
ated by the inspiratory flow of air both nasal and oral,
which makes the soft palate wave like a flag. The sound
intensity of these vibrations is accentuated by the open
ing of the buccal cavity which acts as a sound box.

The second type, i.e: pharyngeal snoring, is a sort of
rale, of rattle, and even horn whistling. It is caused by
the partial obstruction of the oropharyngeal isthmus by
the base of the tongue with, now and again, its total
occlusion by this tongue base becoming jammed against
the posterior wall of the pharynx, according to the laws
of fluid dynamics, thus causing cessation of breathing
(apnoea), which constitutes the sleep apnoea syndrome
(SAS). Here obstructive sleep apnoea is involved, as
opposed to central sleep apnoea, which has a cerebral
origin. It should be stated that the two types of snoring de
scribed above may easily be combined in the same indi
vidual."

[Pugsy]

1) Leaks from the pillows mask?

No. The nasal pillows never move. 99.9% sure my mouth dropped open a bit. I see this often and almost always in what is probably REM related sleep stage and especially the first REM after sleep onset.
Well below large leak territory...doesn't wake me up...so I don't really care.

2) Why use a BiPAP for top pressure below 15 cm?

Because I want to.
Did you ever read my story of how I ended up on bilevel?
I experienced the "miracle" with bilevel and I kinda like having it every day. I sleep about an hour longer on average than I did on APAP machine. I just like it better so I use it. Simple as that.

3) Those VS2, what kind of snoring are they:

Beats me. For all I know it could be the cat purring up next to my face or the pug dog snoring again.
Since FLs aren't flagged in fixed mode and the pressures can't adjust in fixed mode to snores or FLs...I have no idea if they are important or not. This is highly unusual for me anyway so I don't really give it any thought at all.
If I had been using auto adjusting pressures I might have a better idea as to whether the PR S1 machine thought the snores were worthy of fighting...but I am not so it's something I just accept with this machine in this mode.

[khauser]

Hmmm ... you let the dog in again? Looks like something sat on the hose!

[Pugsy]

Hmmm ... you let the dog in again? Looks like something sat on the hose!

No, the cat has put the fear of God in the poor little pug dog and keeps him run out of the bedroom.
The cat is small and likes to sleep on the foot of the bed or next to my husband when he is home (and he was last night).
Even if she lay on the hose I don't think she weighs enough yet to have any impact.

I think that probably what happened was I just happened to have one of my nights where I probably would have seen pressures pushing 16/20 cm if I had been using auto adjusting pressures. I seem to have those nights maybe once or twice a week.
So this probably was one of those situations where auto mode would have likely kicked in with more pressure than usual.

[STL Mark]

I have found if you surround the house with a layer of cornstarch that the aliens will see their footprints when they walk to your door and it will scare them off. Aliens are afraid of footprints.

[Pugsy]

Here's a few more examples. BTW...I don't know if supine sleeping is the culprit here or not. It might be but a long time ago I built a wall so that I was totally forced to stay on one side all night long and I slept this way for a month and I still saw the same pressure increases being needed in what appears to be REM stage sleep time frame. Supine sleeping may be a factor but my OSA is 5 times worse when in REM than in other sleep stages. Since a month of side sleeping still showed lots of variable pressures...I can't blame all of the pressure needs on supine sleeping...so I just shrug my shoulders and let the machine do its job.

This one where I needed a lot more pressure pretty much all night long. I was in auto mode on the bipap 750.
Only one short lived probably mouth opening again at my usual time to see one.



And this one where only needed at the end of the night and see the snores...it probably was responding to the snores.


And this one is one of my typical boring..nothing exciting going on reports.

[chunkyfrog]

Cornstarch? That's a lot cheaper than aluminum foil.
Maybe I'll give that a shot.

[Kiralynx]

2) Why use a BiPAP for top pressure below 15 cm?

Maybe because some people can't breathe out against the pressure required to resolve hypopneas?

[Pugsy]

And below is my report from last night....hugely different from the night before when the aliens paid a visit.
I changed absolutely nothing in my machine or my routine.
This is why I don't panic when I see a rare ugly night. Most of my nights will fall in the range of looking like this report below...either with the BiPap Pro or the BiPap Auto with auto adjusting pressures.
Again you see my usual evidence of probably mouth opening episode around my usual "witching" hour time frame. This is so common for me that I just have to laugh about it. Almost always between the 1 and 2 hour mark after sleep onset I see the leak bumps.
I will admit to waking up on a rare occasion and I will be breathing through slightly parted lips. Sometimes mouth dry and sometimes not. Since it is rare and most of the time I sleep right through it and I don't go into large leak territory....I just don't care.
It's not the nasal pillows...that I am certain of. With this new Tap Pap...those pillows just don't ever move.

[robysue]

Good to know the aliens only visited one night instead deciding to move in.

[avi123]

In my case, it depends which alien shows up. If it's this one then I get extra good results:

[drj130]

Pugsy,

Please tell your friends to get outta my machine please. They been messing with my stuff.



Though I do feel a bit more rested today.

[SleepyToo2]

If they give you an AHI of 0.5 every night, send them to me! They are good aliens! Anything over 5.0 is a bad alien in my books. So what are your concerns?

[drj130]

The missing time... did they take me or the machine?