1 Year Update

[rholmack]

Hi all,

I've been on CPAP therapy for about a year now. I come on to the board about twice a month and see what's happening, but I thought I'd give my update.

I started about a year ago. At first I struggled with a mask. Discovered I was allergic to latex with my first mask. Had to wait a week for my face to clear up from the reaction. I went to another nose one by Resmed. It worked okay at first and I got to where I couldn't take the pressure on my nose arch. My DME let try another mask, so I tried nasal pillow mask; the go life for men. I feel in love with it. I did have problems with it. I had to let my nose get used to pressure there and I used to get sores there. A little painful until they healed. I would use the resmed one until it healed. I did that for a few months and now I don't have that problem at all.

The therapy wasn't an over night thing for me. I really struggled with air leaks, too tight of a mask. With the help from here, I tweaked my lower air pressure setting from 8 to 9 and the higher setting down from 15 to 13. I tested between the C-flex and a-flex settings and just straight pressure. Found I do best, thanks to sleephead software, with a-flex setting of 2. I held each setting for a week to test each setting before I tried something else. I think it took me a good six months to do all this. I also use the humidifier. I found the setting 1 works fine for me. Mainly because I don't run out of water at that setting. All the others, I run out of water and my sinuses hurt, a chronic problem I have. Many months of struggling with sleep. Felt like giving up a few times, but I knew deep down that I needed to continue on.

I was cruising along all right for while. My health was slowly improving. Like my blood pressure meds were reduced, my sinus problems seemed to have gone down some and my weight went down. I started to feel like I wasn't so sleepy anymore and then, I started having problems again. Waking up at night and feeling sleepy again in the afternoon. About a month ago, my wife walks in the bedroom after I've gone to sleep and found that the CPAP machine wasn't on. She switched it on and that woke me up. I didn't sleep well the rest of the night and noticed the machine shutting itself down all night long. Thinking nothing was wrong, I used it like that for a few more nights. I was so sleepy, I knew something was wrong. I called my DME and they said to bring it in. So I did and they found that the machine's airflow sensor had gone bad. They switched it out for me and I've been sleeping like a baby ever since. So, who knows how long that was going on. I've noticed that my numbers have gone down in sleepyhead. I feel refreshed now when I wake up and I'm ready for the day: full speed ahead.

I went to my sleep doctor this week and he doesn't want to see me again for another year. I've now dropped off my high blood pressure meds and I'm reading normal without them. I've lost a few more pounds in the last month, still way over weight. I've also noted that my gout problems have subsided this last month too. Not sure why. Now only if my sinus problems would go away...

Have a nice day,
Roger

[chunkyfrog]

CONGRATULATIONS!

[Xney]

nice work!

[SolSionnach]

Thank you for your update, rholmack. It is so encouraging to read how well you're doing, in spite of your difficulty settling in with a mask.

And thank you for mentioning that your machine had a problem, too. It's too easy to forget that these things do happen! Great that your wife noticed the problem.

Congrats on your first year - may it be the first of many, many more to come!

[jweeks]

Roger,

Good to hear that you are doing well.

I notice that I can use 2/3 of my humidifier water at night even though I run the humidifier on the middle setting. I can imagine that you use a lot more water on a given night in El Paso that I do here in Minnesota. I have noticed that my ResMed machine has more water capacity than my Respironics machine. If you ever consider getting a 2nd machine, maybe you want to look around to see who has the biggest water capacity, and then set aside the PR System One machine as a spare and as a travel machine.

-john-

[rholmack]

John,

Thanks for the idea of getting another machine with a larger water tank. I hadn't considered that. I was thinking of getting an external tank to use. If someone could recommend a good one to get, that would be a big help. On the #1 setting, I go through about a third to half of the tank. When I travel, I usually don't need any humidity setting. I just let it run through cold.

Roger

[kteague]

Congrats on this milestone - many don't persevere to reap the rewards. And thanks for the reminder to add the machine to the list of suspects when we hit a snag.