Elderly mom, balky, and her Luna machine

cpvtnh wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 20, 2023 7:43 pm

Can’t upload it. I get a message “Error: failed to move uploaded file” when I try to upload it as an attachment.

attachment area is full and we have no way of bulk deleting files there.

try an offsite image hosting site, then link to it here. i use imgur.com and it's free. if you need any assistance with this or any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

So my sister took mom to a new sleep doc who is also a neurologist, showed him the Oscar data from the Airsense 10 autoset we bought.

He said her current therapy currently isn’t working and is fighting with insurance to get an overnight sleep study, to which mom agreed.

He thinks her apneas are central — there are periods where she is just not breathing well at all for big chunks of the time. (However, Oscar/Resmed are calling these obstructive apneas, and my personal sense is that Resmed has some serious technology sensing what’s going on).

He upped her lyrica dose for her restless legs.

He said that with effective treatment there is no reason her current mostly foggy brain wouldn’t improve quite a lot or all the way. He had no pessimism on that front, so that’s good.

The good thing about buying the Resmed Airsense and using it over the Luna is that we could see in the data that her previous DME/sleep doc were just way off base. They were chalking it up to mask fit, while that seems to not be the issue at all. They just didn’t have any good data to work with. I guess that Airsense 10 will be good to have as a spare for me.

Can you post new Oscar data? Sounds like your neuro. has a brain!

So, we’re still working on mom, to continue this thread, and ask a question.

First, the question:

My sister (and far less often I) still monitors mom in the night. We’ve often thought how handy it would be if my sister could get an alert or a yes/no on her phone on whether mom, a few rooms away, has her mask on or off. Mom needs the therapy so badly, and she is still somewhat prone to taking the mask off. My sister gets up to check and find the mask is still on, or stays sleepy wondering, or doesn’t check and the mask is off. If we could get something maybe the size of an AirTag to slip under a pad-a-cheek mask cover (f30i) or attach to the hose to detect the change in volume when the mask comes off. Or anything that could notify. Some way to remotely detect if the cpap is in use or blowing free.

So, a bit more on where we’re at:

Once we got her the ResMed Airsense 10 and started looking at Oscar, we realized how bad her apnea is — really bad. We got an overnight sleep study, she got a new scrip.

Unfortunately, she is such a poor night-sleeper that she only slept for one chunk of the study, and the other chunk where they were hoping to experiment with ASV she didn’t sleep enough to get good data.

The doc actually reduced her max pressure (which I suspected might help her difficulty in wearing the mask — I figured she was having trouble exhaling against the pressure). So she went from I think 9-20 changed to I think 11-15 pressure. The doc said, with this, it’s really important for her to sleep on her side. Good luck with that, but we are trying. Her apnea is much, much worse on her back.

She has been doing better at keeping the mask on, and her AHI has dropped some nights to near 5, which is amazingly better. She has gotten a bit more clarity, but last night had a big chunk of no-mask-on-her-back, so she is muddled. The Oscar data has been night and day different, and not the solid blocks of apneas we were seeing before this change. It’s pretty amazing that this change in prescription made such a big difference. I thought she would need a new machine.

The new sleep doc/neurologist said there is no reason to doubt that she couldn’t get her clarity of mind back to a large degree if we can get the therapy to work for her. Her current state of memory is very poor, so it would be amazing if he is right, and my sister could regain a lot of her quality of life if mom could need less minding, day and night.

It's good to hear there are some signs of improvement.

About keeping the mask on: people have tried several strategies. One is to put pieces of tape across a mask strap, anchoring the tape on the face on both sides. The theory is that when the person tries to remove the mask, the tug on the face will wake the person up and alert them that they need to leave the mask alone. Another is to wear mittens or socks on the hands to make it harder to take the mask off. And another is to wear a cap that ties under the chin, positioning it over the mask headgear.

None of that will work if your mother is fully awake and determined to get the mask off. But if she's taking it off while asleep or half-awake, one of these methods might help.

People also use several strategies to stay off their backs. One is the judicious use of extra pillows to snug the sleeper into a side-sleeping position. Another is to wear a pocket t-shirt backwards, with a small ball in the pocket. If you look on Amazon, you'll find products designed to do one or both of those things.