Anyway, I've had an on again/off again relationship with my CPAP therapy. My first machine a ResMed S9, worked ok, and I used it fairly regularly for a year or two, but after struggling with some other health issues, I fell out of the habbit of using it, and struggled to get back on the horse.
This post might be a bit long, apologies if so, I'm providing a bit of context first, which I hope will help in reviewing the data I post later.
In 2017, I moved from Canada to New Zealand, for work. And before moving, decided I needed to get my act together and really make another go of using the CPAP. So I got a new Philips Dreamstation 1 before leaving Canada, as I had insurance to cover it, and got back into using it. I used it for the first year a fair bit, at that time I was using a ResMed AirFit F20 mask (I'm a mouth breather when I sleep, and could never get chin straps or tape to work, also have facial hair I'd rather not entirely get rid of which complicates things), and I had a wave of really struggling with leaks keeping me up, but the final straw was my first winter in NZ I got hit with a cold, which turned into a string of major respiratory issues (constant congestion, colds, several respiratory infections, at one point was using an inhaler for asthma symptoms, something I've never suffered from before, etc). And at one point I simply couldn't deal with the continuing leak/comfort issues with the mask, and the ongoing respiratory issues, I would wake up feeling a very heavy feeling on my chest, as if someone had been sitting on my chest after sleeping, and I usually felt terrible. After throwing in the towel a second time, I actually felt great, but I still slept terribly, snored excessively, and occasionally felt pretty tired. (fairly typical of how it was pre-diagnosis).
So leap ahead a couple years, and getting a bit older, and getting more concerned about my day to day health as I want to improve things before getting too much further over the hill, so want to start losing weight, and dealing with many lingering things I've been neglecting. One of them was to try and get back on the horse again, and put some real focus on my apnea, give it a solid go and try to make it work this time, as the health complications it can cause are a serious concern.
So I unpacked the old DreamStation, and went to fire it up, only to see "Service Required" on the screen... Upon going online to look it up, I quickly found out about "FoamGate" (the recall) and was disturbed by that whole situation (and based on what I described above that I began suffering immediately after using the Philips machine, makes me wonder if I was dealing with symptoms from the bad foam... Though it could have also just been new allergens/pollens in NZ etc, who knows).
Anyway, so I've registered for the recall, but I don't trust Philips as far as I can throw them, so I've gone out and bought a brand new ResMed AirSense 10 Autoset, out of pocket... I really want to commit to getting this right this time around. I still had a spare (unused) AirFit F20 mask, but I found out about the AirFit F30i mask, and thought I'd give that a go.
Fast forward to yesterday, got the new machine, unpacked it, cleaned everything up, and was actually excited to give it a go. Tried on the new mask, and wow, it's FAR more comfortable than the F20, Did a quick fit test, and had no leaks at all, I love the top of head hose, as I'm a very "violent" sleeper, (I toss/turn/kick/squirm/roll/fall off the bed/etc). And I found the hose on the face constantly pulled at the mask and caused it to leak when I moved around. With this one in a quick (while awake) test in the bed, I found it didn't leak when I rolled around on my pillow in the same way, because the mask protrudes less...
So I setup the machine with a max pressure matching my previous prescription of 16cmH20, set most of the other settings to their defaults or auto settings, and had a go at sleeping with it last night.
Things I noticed before falling asleep:
- I felt the EPR worked way better than the Philips version. It was much easier to breathe naturally
- I found the mask much more comfortable, and the initial pressure level starting low was super comfortable prior to falling asleep
- I fell asleep easily and quickly, probably 15-30min at most
Overall I felt pretty good when I woke up.
However I did have some issues during the night:
- I was suffering from pretty severe back pain in the middle of the night, it wasn't bad when I went to bed, but I woke up several times uncomfortable, tossed around a lot trying to find a comfortable position where my back didn't hurt (this is not abnormal for me, reasonably common)
- I woke up several times to the sound of leaks. The leaks weren't bothering me in the normal way (coldness, blowing in my eyes, etc) but I woke up hearing the blowing/whistling. Usually this is because I'd contorted my body in a wierd way and was putting pressure on the mask in some way that caused it to leak on one side or the other. So I'd roll over/correct and it would be fine. But I woke up this way probably 10+ times through the night.
- I woke up early morning (probably 3-4am but I don't really know, didn't check the time) with a pretty severe leak, tightened the lower straps a bit, and that seemed to solve it, went back to sleep.
So I consider it a pretty successful night.
But then I looked at the data in Oscar, out of curiosity. I'm not planning on juding anything by the first night, but was just curious how it went. And I found a few oddities I wanted some input on (hopefully the above context helps in interpreting this). I found that the AHI through the night was 6.58, which was much higher than I saw with the Philips machine (between 1.0 and 2.0 usually). And most of them were clustered together in a period slightly after midnight (about an hour and a half after I went to bed). During this cluster it was reporting a localized peak AHI of 35.
When I looked at the data zoomed in on that period, I found an odd pattern, when looking at the flow rate, which appeared to indicate I was taking 2-3 breaths with diminishing flow, and then having a 2-3 breath obstructive event, on a constant repeating cycle, which seemed very strange to me.
Anyway, here are the charts, would love any feedback/tips/advice/guidance anyone wishes to throw my way.
I'll continue at it through this week, and may make a few minor adjustments, then will post back on this thread with updates on my progress as I go.
Thanks in advance! Now for the screenshots:
Here is my nightly overview for last night: And here is a zoomed in area of one of the clusters of events: And finally a section zoomed in on an area free of events for comparison: If you'd like to see any other specific data, or additional charts, or if you would like me to answer any other questions I'm of course happy to do so, just let me know what I can do.
Thanks!