Thank you kindly for your explanation. It is awesome to hear you can relate and areas I should be looking. I am giving it a bit more time, going to follow up with my pulmonologist on October 7th and find out if she is going to recommend a Bi-Level and/or a higher Rx pressure. Most of my apnea events at this point are centrals; I still have a bit of Hypopneas and even lesser OAs now. However CAs are kind of high in my opinion. I am wondering if she is going to suggest a BiLevel machine. I know without higher resolution, it may be hard for you to say:Pugsy wrote:You may find that your REM time increases with optimal therapy. I too had poor REM % and poor sleep efficiency during my sleep study but what is common is that our OSA is worse in REM...so the apnea events happen and it causes an arousal/wake up and we get kicked out of REM sleep only to have to start the sleep stages all over again.
So if you are like me...your sleep apnea might be worse in REM (it's quite common). Don't be surprised if you start remembering more dreams now.
During my sleep study my O2 went to 73%...I had it checked after about 3 months on the cpap machine and it never really dropped significantly so cpap fixed my low O2 problem.
Now sometimes I do still get some bad headaches but those I know are usually from sleeping in some weird position on the bed pillow. My neck is in pretty bad shape (metal plate in it) from the arthritis so I still sometimes get what I call "neck headaches".
Remember that it's normal to have a few occasional centrals...we all have them from time to time. They aren't a problem unless they are present in large numbers or causing desats or if they are sleep onset centrals and they keep waking us up all the time.
So seeing a handful of centrals here and there isn't automatically a cause for alarm.
Therapy Efficiacy
Most Recent | Last Week | Last 30 days | Last 6 Months | Last Year
AHI 5.74 3.53 4.34 4.34 4.34
Obstructive Index 0.19 0.18 0.27 0.27 0.27
Hypopnea Index 0.46 0.54 0.63 0.63 0.63
Clear Airway Index 4.90 2.70 3.29 3.29 3.29
Obviously after the first follow-up visit, I'll see how helpful she can be with optimizing my treatment (I'm sure will call it at less than 5 as "treated", hence no reason to mess with anything). The lowest night I had was an AHI of .94, but I have had an AHI as high as 10. I don't really know what's going on with my CAs. Some of it is the medications, I'm sure. But, even days or upwards a week without, I still experience CAs contribute to an AHI that average around 3 for a given night. Obstructives and Hypopneas account for around .3 to .6, with OSA usually falling on the lower range. Looks like I haven't knocked out the OSA completely. I would like to get at least that far, if not also eliminating the CAs; an AHI of zero of course is the long coveted goal of treatment, but it takes time, patience, and possibly a large pocketbook for that. Right now my health is the thing I'm focused on so I want to do whatever is necessary to correct my sleep apnea so I can reestablish my baseline on how I am feeling, so eliminate the ill effects of sleep apnea and reassess the way I'm feeling - if I should be proceeding with doctors to get a few other things checked out after my last round of doctor appointments.
The headaches have gotten a little better from the treatment. The biggest difference I am noticing is I am not going to fall asleep behind the wheel or at work, which I was dangerously close at doing. I still have daytime weakness and headaches, but the morning headaches that felt like I was ran over my tractor have abated mostly. I still have 1-2 days a week where I wake up this way, not sure why... unless I had bad desats, which probably isn't as frequent / possible now that I am being treated.