Thanks to everyone on this forum who has helped me in the past, especially Pugsy and his helpful remarks on my charts.
A host of things are preventing me from fully responding to CPAP therapy. I went to a good allergist, and she says her patients always seem to do better (and at lower pressure requirements) with nasal pillow mask. I said well i mouth breath, and she said we gotta clear your nose. So we are working on that (neti pots, and she gave me sprays). They have helped. Turns out I have a dust allergy so I have to keep my living and sleeping environment really super free of dust mite allergan. Things are still quite variable though.
I am struggling to interpret my graphs now that I have switched from Quattro FX FFM to Swift FX pillows. I used pillows periodically in the past but consistently the last two weeks. Overall, my numbers are lower with nasal, but I don't think that tells the full story because I don't feel as good as that low of a number on a FFM would imply.
I am also seeing a tongue therapist who is helping me with my (apparently in daytime and nighttime) habitual mouth breathing. I am doing tongue exercises and keeping tongue where it should be but I still mouth breath in middle of the night. I have used chin straps and most recently have tried taping to keep mouth shut. Also it seems lower pressure (obviously) helps prevent leaks or lip fluttering. Poligrip didn't work for me.
I need help understanding these two graphs. First one is two nights ago. I've never had a sleep graph that looks like this with a nasal pillow, and only sometimes with FFM. I taped my mouth shut and it was also the first time on a slightly lower pressure of 10.5. But still didn't expect total flatline. And as you see my AHI was really very low too (my average across is around 3.5 and nasal pillows is a bit lower). I didn't sleep long enoough duration wise to feel good but very few apnea events and no leak.
Second graph is what my nights NORMALLY look like. Everything was the same. Somethign always wakes me up in the middle of the night at least once, not sure if it's CPAP treatment that is causing the awakening or otherwise. Can you all help me understand what is going on with this pattern? Since this is what my leak graphs normally look like, I never even am quite sure how I should trust the AHI indicators either.
It looks like to me, that if my leak rate is gradually increasing, then does that mean the machine is consistently increasing pressure/flow to try and maintain a stable 10.5 cm delivered pressure? If it is doing that ramp up, with these plateus and peaks and valleys, is that a result of mouth breathing? That is the only thing I can think of. Like, a little bit of lip fluttering starts the process, so machine compensates, but it just goes to cause more mouth breathing, so machine compensates even more, eventually leading to full mouth breaithing EVEN though I am taped (when I wake up I feel the inside of my tape moist and i'm sure i'm leaking somehow through corners.
I feel a bit in despair becaause I just can't seem to get this right. I know none of the leaks register as high enough for "large leak" but I am positive this is nto a good pattern, that it is causing awakening, and that it may be certainly reducing effectiveness of treatment.
Why would the machine start this process of ramping up? Might this also be caused by nose getting stuffed up, therefore, i start mouth breathing because i need more air even though I'm taped? If so, then if I have any propensity to get even slightly stuffed up during treatment, is taping my mouth shut seriously dangerous?
And sometimes, I can't even tell the difference between taping, taping+chinstrap, and chinstrap only when it comes to graphs. They usually all look alike. So what does that mean?
I'm sorry for the long post, but I'm really just desparate to figure out how I should interpret these graphs. How can I get my graphs to look more like the first than the second?!? Please help!
I have System One, 10.5cm APAP with max moisture and heated tube settings.
