Newbie needs some help Dreamstation CPAP

[Carlitosbaby]

I've been using CPAP since March 1st, 2019. Finally diagnosed after many years of feeling like crap and insurance denying to give me test. I am attaching sleep study results given to me. Doctor prescribed a Dreamstation 400 with Airfit N20 Mask which I have been using everyday. I feel alot better. I sleep different hrs because of my job. Atm I just had surgery so I'm in bed alot more and wear mask while watching TV in case I fall asleep. I was assigned fixed pressure of 10.0 cm Doctor told me my AHI was 87 before cpap but from results I cant tell how he arrived at that number. I used to snore super loud before to the point that my wife has been sleeping in another room and even kids on another floor complained. I started reading on here for months now learning and reading everyone stories. I finally installed sleepyhead since last few days my AHI has really spiked on machine. I usually have under a 1.0 ahi according to dreammapper. Last few days only thing I've changed is I stopped drinking Oxy which I was prescribed for surgery. I now know I should have gotten a Bipap instead of Cpap but to late now and I paid out of pocket Any help you guys can offer with the equipment I have is appreciated. Originally they put ramp on 4.0 I turned it off since I couldnt breath with such a low pressure now I just use the 10 with cpapwithcflexplus it was set at 3 I switched to 2 a few weeks ago. I tried to attached last few days of Sleepyhead results but it wouldn't let me upload more than 3 pictures.

[Pugsy]

Welcome to the forum.

Attachments are limited to 3 per post. You can do another post with more attachments.

Go ahead and post your recent SH report that concerns you and also include an old report where the AHI was nice and low.
See this thread for formatting...we don't need or want all the graphs SH offers.
viewtopic/t158560/How-to-post-images-for-review.html

[katestyles]

Welcome to the forum!

Congrats on getting your diagnosis, and settling into your therapy.

It sounds like you made a great start, apart from the recent spike you say you have in your AHI.

AHI will go up and down, due to all the different factors that go into your sleep.

Can you try again to post up your sleepyhead images - use several posts if you need. They will give us a much better idea of what is going on.

[Carlitosbaby]

Last 2 nights and 1 from weekend that was good and low. I'm just trying to get the best results as possible and still have alot to learn. I hope I did pictures right.

[Carlitosbaby]

3 more on the 13th is when it went above 1.0 cm for first time.

[Pugsy]

When was your surgery?
What kind of surgery?
When did you stop the Oxy? Are you taking anything else for pain? Are you having any pain?

I suspect your AHI increase is either from either the surgery, pain or pain meds and you will eventually return to those lower AHI numbers but it takes a while to recover from any surgery...
Plus...while I know it seems like the AHI is high compared to the prior nights...it's not really that bad. Many of us see that much variation in AHI from night to night and not be taking any new meds and not have had a surgery.

How has your sleep quality been since the surgery? Wake up much during the night? If so, totally normal post surgery to do that but sometimes if you are wearing the cpap mask with the machine on the machine mistakes awake breathing irregularities for some sort of apnea event and you get a flag when you weren't asleep. These are commonly called SWJ or sleep/wake/junk and we just have to ignore them. If you aren't asleep they simply don't matter.

My normal AHI is less than 1.0 but not long ago I had a night where the AHI was 3.6...unusually high for me but really not horribly high anyway.
So I decided to take a look at the flagged events up close (zoomed way in on the flow rate) to see if it looked like asleep breathing or awake or post arousal breathing. Every single flagged event was related to an arousal or I was awake...not a single event was when I was asleep. That night I happened to have an extra bad night in terms of back pain. I remember lots of wake ups from pain and lots of tossing and turning....so the flagged events were all SWJ. Only thing they pointed to was crappy sleep and the crappy sleep was due to pain.
If you want to learn how to evaluate flagged events to spot awake vs asleep breathing start here and watch all the videos.
http://freecpapadvice.com/sleepyhead-free-software
Awake or semi awake breathing is very irregular when compared to asleep breathing. These machines have no way to know if we are asleep or not so they can and will flag awake breathing irregularities as some sort of apnea event. Giving us false positive so to speak.

It's very common to have sleep issues after a surgery for any number of reasons. Pain, meds, anesthesia after affects...all can mess with our breathing and thus give the machine a chance to flag some false positives.
Best thing to do...don't panic and don't worry and give yourself some time for the body to heal and get the drugs out of your system and your sleep quality return to normal.

[Carlitosbaby]

Surgery was April 9th. I had an ACDF Disc removed and boned fused in my neck. I stopped Oxy on the May 14th. Im having a little more pain than before now since I stopped the oxy but Ive seen to many people hooked on it so I rather just deal with the pain. Im taking same meds as before other than oxy just tylenol and baclofen muscle relaxer. Numbers went up day before I stopped the oxy. I know numbers arent bad Ive read some people who cant go below 5.0 just rather nip something in the bud faster than later. I feel extremely tired last few days as well but I guess I can attribute that to more pain and more tossing and turning trying to get comfortable. I appreciate your input. I'm still learning have to read up more on sleepyhead and how to tell what everything is.