Few Questions

[nawchem]

2 nights ago I remember thinking I was breathing strangely deep breaths. I woke up gasping for air and pulled the mask off. I'm not sure what happened, isn't the machine supposed to be fixing this kind of thing? My AHI averages 0.5. On sleep HQ i got unknown apnea. What does that mean?

When I turn on the machine, I can hear it, it immediately messages a large leak and shuts down. Sometimes I plug and unplug the hose a few times and that fixes it or I take the water chamber off and put it on repeatedly and that fixes it. What's going on? I haven't had a machine do this before.

Thanks!

[Miss Emerita]

An unknown apnea is one that the machine can't identify as obstructive or non-obstructive. Sometimes that happens during a large leak; sometimes it just happens.

If you can post the link to the SleepHQ information, we can take a look.

With an AHI of .5, you're doing great. You will still have the occasional event; what the machine does is raise your pressure after an event to head off additional events. Then it'll let the pressure go back down to avoid subjecting you to unnecessary pressure.

It seems you've identified the sources of the large leaks when you start up. You might take the machine in to your DME in case the hose connection or the seating for the water chamber are defective.

[nawchem]

I'm lost on how to copy the image over here.

The unknown apnea correlates exactly with a large leak that went up to approx 100! I had 2 large leaks the first one didn't trigger apnea.
Time in apnea 52 sec
Time in large leak 54 sec

I'll message DME on the rest.

Thank you Miss Emerita!

[nawchem]

https://sleephq.com/public/ed6c4b81-38c ... ed0c16c115

[Miss Emerita]

OK, if you really pulled your mask off, then that's why there's a large leak there. Because your mask was off, the machine couldn't detect any exhale following your big inhale, so it "thought" you were having some kind of event. Don't worry about the LL and the UA.

You had about 45 seconds of disturbed breathing before the LL/UA. I don't know why; maybe you were having a bad dream? (Though usually that pattern of breathing would mean that you were awake.) I do see some flow limitation around the time disturbed breathing started. On that subject, might you consider raising your EPR to 3? That might help to reduce your FLs. For some people FLs can affect the quality of their sleep, though for others they're not a problem.

[nawchem]

Thanks, I have no idea what that means but I can raise EPR.

[vandownbytheriver]

AS11 has a known hose connection leak issue... the work-around is to face the machine away from you so the hose is not pulled sideways. Always check the hose connection to make sure it's fully seated. This is only for the heated hose... the normal hose does not have this problem.

The tub is sometimes hard to seat... cram it in there tightly.

[nawchem]

Oh, thanks will definitely try that with the hose. I always face it towards me. The humidifier is kind of irritating. I have arthritis my hands ache dealing with it.