Survived the First Night

[leebrown]

Well I survived my first night of nasal pillow torture. My wife was kind and didn't even hit me when I started leaking and woke her up. In addition to having OSA, I'm a bit of an insomniac at times. I only managed 3.9 hours on the machine and one of those was with me awake. I'm generally a pretty sound sleeper but it managed to wake me once or twice not too surprisingly.

My biggest problem (and I had the same experience in the Sleep Center) was waking up completely certain someone was trying to suffocate me. Fortunately, I wake quickly so I didn't destroy any equipment trying to rip it from my face. The problem is when this happens it freaks me out and I have to take the thing off. I just set the mask on my night stand for a little while and then put it back on to try again. I managed to sleep for another 45 minutes, but then got up so I could get my weekend run started.

My prescription is pretty low from what I understand 7 cm with 3 cms Cflex. The respiratory therapist set up the machine to Ramp from 4 cm up to 7, but frankly starting at 4 cm also freaks me out and it feels like I can't get enough air.

Hopefully I'll get a little more sleep tonight. I ran 20 miles today so I should be tired enough to rest well.

Blessings,
Lee

[Hawthorne]

In my opinion, you shouldn't even have ramp on. A setting of 4 cm will certainly make most people feel like they are not getting enough air, even if it is just for ramp.

With a pressure setting of 7 cm, ramp is not really much use and, having it at 4 really makes that ramp pressure too low for however long ramp is set.

You said you have your C-Flex set at 3 cm. That is really not 3 cm but setting of 3. C-Flex settings can be 1, 2 or 3 but those are not cm. And, unlike the Resmed machines, each setting does not drop the exhalation pressure by that number of cms. The flex setting does drop the pressure some on exhalation though and I don't like it to be too much, based on the therapy pressure.

With a setting of 7, I think that C-Flex at a setting of 3 is too much. I would try a C-Flex setting of 2 and a setting of 1 might be even more comfortable after you have adjusted to the machine.

It would help us if you would fill in your profile so that we know what machine you are using and what mask. You mentioned nasal pillows but not which ones.

I'm not a medical person - just someone who has sleep apnea and uses a cpap machine.

[leebrown]

Hawthorne,

Thanks for the quick response. Sorry I thought I had edited my profile yesterday, but I guess I forgot to apply the settings.

After using ramp one time I gave up on it. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Lee

[Hawthorne]

Glad you gave up on ramp. Most of us do!

You are doing fine. It takes time to adjust to sleeping with all this! Soon it will be almost automatic!

I'm glad to help as much as I can because I got, and still get, so much help on this forum!