autopap blows bursts of air at me when awake

[elena88]

Does anyone else have this problem? I take forever to get to sleep, between one to four hours.. two hours or more is normal..
I lie there with my little nose pillows after I get settled in bed.. Then when Im all relaxed, woosh! here it comes, a big burst of air out
of nowhere.. Happens about every minute or so, I noticed when I start to think about something, and Im concentrating, thats when it happens..
Makes it VERY hard to get to sleep, and I already have trouble.. Just wondering if this is a common problem, and any suggestions?
thanks! elena
p.s. I have a respironics remstar auto A flex system one, I think my titration number was ten or eleven.

[blakepro]

Does anyone else have this problem? I take forever to get to sleep, between one to four hours.. two hours or more is normal..
I lie there with my little nose pillows after I get settled in bed.. Then when Im all relaxed, woosh! here it comes, a big burst of air out
of nowhere.. Happens about every minute or so, I noticed when I start to think about something, and Im concentrating, thats when it happens..
Makes it VERY hard to get to sleep, and I already have trouble.. Just wondering if this is a common problem, and any suggestions?
thanks! elena
p.s. I have a respironics remstar auto A flex system one, I think my titration number was ten or eleven.

Wondering if you have noticed that you may be momentarily holding your breath when you are concentrating like that.

[elena88]

I have noticed that I take longer to inhale, there is a pause sometimes, I notice it when Im sleeping with hubby,
as our breathing patterns dont match at all.

[Luc]

re: "I take forever to get to sleep, between one to four hours.. two hours or more is normal.."

In my book, this is more of a problem than any burst of air, and is certainly not normal. Try improving your sleep patterns...going to bed later when you are more tired maybe, or if after 20-30 minutes you are still awake, then get up and watch TV or something until you're good and drowsy. This "concentrating" is certainly not helping you rest. Just close your eyes, relax and drift. Trust your machine. Unless it is an old clunker, it is probably delivering a constant pressure.

Luc

[elena88]

oh how I would love to close my eyes, relax and drift.. I have worked on my sleep architecture, I have been trying everything I can, I have been
an insomniac since I was a kid, just like my dad, and my mom was an ultra light sleeper.. which I am as well.. when Im thinking about something, Im thinking about some happy thing, or happy place to relax to get to sleep.. like laying on the beach on a tropical island.. the waves breaking gently on the shore.. umbrella drink in my hand.. and woosh! there it goes.. I have a new machine, its not a clunker, and it follows my every breath.. maybe a little too
much.. ????

[blakepro]

oh how I would love to close my eyes, relax and drift.. I have worked on my sleep architecture, I have been trying everything I can, I have been
an insomniac since I was a kid, just like my dad, and my mom was an ultra light sleeper.. which I am as well.. when Im thinking about something, Im thinking about some happy thing, or happy place to relax to get to sleep.. like laying on the beach on a tropical island.. the waves breaking gently on the shore.. umbrella drink in my hand.. and woosh! there it goes.. I have a new machine, its not a clunker, and it follows my every breath.. maybe a little too
much.. ????

I would try changing the Cflex/Cflex+/Aflex settings to see if any of them feel more natural to you. You might also play around with the ramp feature to see if you can get drifted off to sleep before the machine becomes more active.

When it sends those pressure puffs your way, the machine is sensing a disturbance in you breathing rhythm and its testing to see if you are having an obstructive apnea, or a central one.

I would suggest getting your data card and asking your DME to print the detailed waveform report for you so you can actually SEE the way you were breathing and why the machine decided to send you a puff.

Below is a waveform report from my machine. The little red squares are when the machine gave me a "pressure pulse" and you can see that it helped me to start breathing normally again.

One thing to note: Your data card only contains the wave form from the previous night. It replaces it each day, so if you have a particularly bad night, you should try to get a read out that next day so you can see what happened.

[elena88]

Aha! thats what it is, a pressure pulse! thank you! OH, that is a very interesting graph, thanks for posting it.. How facinating and wonderful to see
what went on!
So, if I can program the machine to expect me not to take a breath so quickly, maybe it would let up on the pressure pulses when Im trying
to GET to sleep.. thank you! On my at home titration study, the autopap machine had a forty five minute ramp feature, which was useless to me, I dont
think you can set them for two hours or I would have asked them to do that..

Now I have this new machine.. so... Next question, would the DME guy tell me how to take care of this over the phone? I know they charge when they come to your house, and this is all out of pocket till huge deductable is met.. . This is the same guy who told me I couldnt get data out of my machine.. He works with the hospital and my pulmanary doctor, he will do anything SHE asks him to do, but I doubt if I ask it will happen.. and she does anything I ask, so somehow this is going to work out.. I dont see her for two months though..
Thats a lot of beachy vacation thoughts interupted! : )
Thank you so very much for all your help and advice! Elena

[blakepro]

Aha! thats what it is, a pressure pulse! thank you! OH, that is a very interesting graph, thanks for posting it.. How facinating and wonderful to see
what went on!
So, if I can program the machine to expect me not to take a breath so quickly, maybe it would let up on the pressure pulses when Im trying
to GET to sleep.. thank you! On my at home titration study, the autopap machine had a forty five minute ramp feature, which was useless to me, I dont
think you can set them for two hours or I would have asked them to do that..

Now I have this new machine.. so... Next question, would the DME guy tell me how to take care of this over the phone? I know they charge when they come to your house, and this is all out of pocket till huge deductable is met.. . This is the same guy who told me I couldnt get data out of my machine.. He works with the hospital and my pulmanary doctor, he will do anything SHE asks him to do, but I doubt if I ask it will happen.. and she does anything I ask, so somehow this is going to work out.. I dont see her for two months though..
Thats a lot of beachy vacation thoughts interupted! : )
Thank you so very much for all your help and advice! Elena

Hmm... sounds like your DME is not particularly helpful. There is a lot of useful information on the forums here about all this stuff. You can make these changes your self without getting charged for someone to come out and do it for you. You just need to be careful: If you change the wrong things, it could make things worse, so its good to have some helpful guidance.

You might try calling your DME or DOCTOR to see if they are willing to guide you on changing your aflex and ramp settings. I would explain up front that money is tight and that you cant afford to get help if they must charge you. Make sure they understand that you cant pay them for the assistance and if they cant help you without charging you, that you will just leave it how it is. If they are decent at all, they should help you (or may offer to help you if you bring the machine in to them)

If you do decide to tweak settings on your own, I would suggest that you read up on the wiki viewtopic/t46382/CPAP-Wiki-Our-Wisdom-g ... eover.html to become familiar with things, and then would suggest you ask a lot of questions here on the forums. Most of the people here are really experienced and have valuable information they can share with you.

We were all new to this at some point and had to go through the learning curve. just keep searching for the answers and your therapy will benefit greatly from your diligence.

[DoriC]

You might try tweaking your Flex setting and see if that helps. We finally figured out that the Flex didn't match my husband's breathing pattern and rushed him to inhale when he wasn't finished exhaling. We lowered it and then just turned it Off. Much better. It is a comfort feature and everyone is different.

[blakepro]

You might try tweaking your Flex setting and see if that helps. We finally figured out that the Flex didn't match my husband's breathing pattern and rushed him to inhale when he wasn't finished exhaling. We lowered it and then just turned it Off. Much better. It is a comfort feature and everyone is different.

Dori, Do you mind sharing what machine your husband uses?

[elena88]

thank you kindly for all this very precious advice.. thank goodness for all of you and this place to come..
I will try to figure this out, and get that DME to be more proactive for me too. I am afraid Im going to
mess up something, dont want to rock the boat, but YES, the thing blasts me very often when Im not
done resting after I exhale.. Im a shallow breather anyway, and I dont rush to inhale after Im done exhaling..
Thank you all so much! elena
Im sure you all have your own special breathing patterns too, and these machines really make one
realize how we are breathing.. awake or asleep..

[blakepro]

Elena, I sent you a PM with some info you might find helpful.

[elena88]

thank you so very much blakepro! Got it!
Well, here is hoping everyone has a good nights sleep!