New here! Can’t sleep lol

[TheStamp]

So yeah, can’t sleep so I thought why not register? Anyway… presentations are in order: recently (as in 17 days ago) diagnosed with OSA mostly because my Apple Watch has been nagging me about having that checked out for a couple of years. And speaking of, how’s an AHI of 50? I can’t find a straight answer it’s all “over 30 is rather bad” but I mean… can’t go much higher than that in an hour, right? So at least I have a good high score as a silver lining? Titration was with an AirSense 10 AutoSet, and it had that hospital smell I couldn’t wait to get rid of. Well, after the two weeks, I managed to get a perfectly timed delivery of an AirSense 11 AutoSet with the same Eson 2 mask and boy oh boy do I miss the hospital smell. This is the third night, and the first one actually gave me a headache with the new plastic smell. Yes, it’ll go away. Yes, the thing still works great. But it really tempered my enthusiasm for the new “toy” that for once is useful. One fun thing is that I got prescribed a fixed pressure (12.2) and I found it rather pleasant when the very first thing the machine did was locking me out of the settings I needed to set. Yay for the internet, because ResMed’s manual/help “only for certified professionals” stance wasn’t great. Also! Why they decided to fake smooth scrolling? That half frame per year refresh rate is awful and makes it look like a cheap knockoff of a famous product, so instead of looking good, it has the opposite effect.

The best thing for me was that trying it in the doctor’s office for a couple of minutes it wasn’t good… I tried talking and ultimately got out with some cough. Fully expected the warning that “tonight you’ll curse me” would be true, so to get some practice I decided to use it for a nap after lunch, as I didn’t want to actually fall asleep… turns out it doesn’t bother me one bit, and I slept for hours. Moreover, the next day I got comments like “you didn’t look like a zombie when you woke up” which is, uh, good I guess.

Now what I’m doing my best to avoid, is focusing about the what ifs. This is about a fucky throat (technical term, I believe) so potentially something I had my whole life. What effect, if any, did it have on this or that event? What would my life look like with an early diagnosis? But I can’t just play victim and blame everything on a condition that might not have been intense enough to cause issues for many years! I have free will, and poor choices are still mine, even if they might’ve been influenced by lack of sleep. And anyway, let’s say everything that ever went wrong is the OSA fault: wtf am I going to do about it? Build a time machine, go back in time and have myself diagnosed? Wouldn’t know where to source a bloody DeLorean so that’s off the table.

[Pugsy]

Welcome to the forum.

So an AHI of 50 ish....yeah, it's technically severe but we have had forum members here with triple digit AHIs so you are a long way from setting the "worst diagnostic AHI" record.

Try to keep the "what ifs" to a minimum if you can. The past is the past and not much we can do about it and doing a lot of what iffing will just drive you crazy. Save your time and energy for things you have some semblance of control over.

It will get easier. I have been doing this since 2009 and in REM my AHI was 53 and it's common for OSA to worsen in REM and even supine sleeping. At this point using the machine is second nature to me.

[TheStamp]

Triple digits? Damn that’s… I’m suddenly very much ok with not having anywhere near a high score, it can’t be nice.

I think the what ifs are kept to a minimum, and that’s probably the machine’s doing too. Before? I can now tell the lack of sleep would cloud my mind and cause depression as a bonus, but I haven’t had any negative moments since starting, and being over two weeks? Not great statistical sample, but it is becoming one. One cool thing was seeing the “Sleeping Disturbances” graph from the Watch going from the elevated zone and taking a nosedive into the not elevated zone the very first night of CPAP, then sticking there unwavering.