Support or advice?

As I'm sure many of you can relate: When I don't have sleep there is no time, the construct ceases to subjectively exist. 5 minutes here, 6 hours there, if I'm unrested there is little meaning to any moment, little color to any light. I'd gotten therapy for depression before I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. It turned out I wasn't depressed, I was just a vehicle on empty (depression was not the source of the problem). The cure was a CPAP machine. Suddenly able to breathe at night, I had a whole new life. I was energized, an early riser, I had a better appetite, I got off of my blood pressure medication (my limbs used to fall asleep all the time, I would have constant pallor) because I no longer needed it. It looked like a new lease on life. I felt happy for small reasons. A month later it ceased to be very effective at all. I'm exhausted again, though not depressed. My short term memory is behaving strangely. I've resorted to taking caffeine pills at breakfast and lunch to keep up with midterms, adderall from an old script (I've tried everything to wake up). I'm bitter and irritable and can barely exercise. I feel old but I'm a 22 year old man 6' and 147 lbs. I've tried gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, vegetarian, vegan . None of it does what the cpap did when I got sleep. My greatest achievements in life did not make me feel the lucidity and contentedness I felt on those fleeting mornings when the machine worked. My AHI averages below 5 with no leak. It has been 3 months of this diminished sense of well being. I don't feel rested however many or few hours of sleep I get. Here I am, writing this at 5:30 in the morning, as exhausted as I'd be at 11. I'm 100% compliant.

Thanks for reading all that, it's a lonely world out there for a young person with this device, I could use some support.

Hi, so sorry to hear your story. It sounds unfortunately like many who have a great start, but then seem to fall back into feeling bad. However, that's the whole point of this terrific forum - there are usually good answers to what went wrong and lots of people to help. Please don't despair!

First, what machine (full name and model #) are you using please? And what mask - type and model name? It so often turns out that you've got the wrong mask for you - either badly fitted, the wrong size or just plain 'wrong', and most of us go through at least a few before finding the one that works for us.

And do you know what your pressure(s) are set to?

The more info we have, the better off we'll be to help you feel good again.

Thank you for responding Julie. I'm using a Philips Respironics REMstar Pro System One (it has cflex+ and a humidifier). I was fitted with a large ResMed Quattro air full face mask because I couldn't keep my mouth shut while sleeping with nasal pillows nor with the nasal mask.

I'm set to 11.5 with a cflex+ setting at 1. I have moderate obstructive +central apnea.

Did you have the mask fitted properly - apparently it requires some specific attention beyond what others do and hopefully some one will come in here with links to a video etc... Have you been looked at for other problems like thyroid, anemia, etc., and do you have consistent sleep habits re time, lack of alcohol, exercise or coffee before bed?

Your AHI sounds great and you say there are few leaks, but are you using software to track progress or just the window of the machine? If so, can you post a graph or two for us to look at? Plus the results of your study (esp. re the CA's).

The mask fits with no leak at all, I'm confident in that. I just checked the machine, my average AHI for the last 30 days is 5.7. How do I upload photos? It says attachments are unauthorized for this forum.

My thoughts exactly, I looked into it; my thyroid is normal and I'm not anemic. I had Lyme disease 2 years ago with no lasting neurological effects (confirmed by MRI) --I wasn't diagnosed with sleep apnea until about 5 months ago. I thought it was my silver bullet until its effects faded after a few weeks. My diagnosis until then was chronic fatigue, which, in my opinion is a doctors way of saying they don't know why, but you sure are tired all the time.

I started taking these to improve sleep, they help noticeably but not significantly enough:

6000 IU vitamin d3
Acetyl-l-carnitine 500mg
Melatonin 3mg
Magnesium 400mg


I started taking vit D bc of this set of videos (if you're interested/ haven't been vit D evangelized already) http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GHCD3fONV1 ... HCD3fONV1k

I have consistent sleep habits w/o alcohol, coffee or exercise before bed. Getting 6, 8, or 10 hours all feels the same somehow. Because of this, my bedtime fluctuates between 11pm and 1 am.

I will post some graphs when I figure out how to put them on this board.

I appreciate your attention to detail

How about trying things without melatonin for a week or so? I find it can be strange myself in that it seems to work for a while, then kind of backfires. I think you can post graphs (but not pix) to e.g. Photobucket, and then link to them on the forum.

Julie wrote:I think you can post graphs (but not pix) to e.g. Photobucket, and then link to them on the forum.

Images in a variety of formats (file types) can be uploaded to Photobucket. "No Spoon," you don't actually attach the image to a post, what you do is upload your image to Photobucket, copy the image code it gives you for that image, then paste the code right into your post. It will just look like text, but if you hit the Preview button you should see the image, and then you know we'll see it too.

If you're using software, like SleepyHead, you can do a screen capture of a graph you want us to see, then upload that image to Photobucket.

Question: Did you stop taking the antidepressants and if so did you tapper off them?

Regards,

Nick