until late Saturday morning while I was getting ready for work. Well, I just had to check it out,
and almost was late because of that.
I wound up staying late at work (left at midnight), and when I got home I set up the new machine
and plopped into bed. I set the machine for IPAP max at 25, EPAP min at 16 and PS max at 3. I had
been using a min of 19 on my S8 AutoSet II, but I wanted to give the more advanced algorithm on
the new machine a bit more leeway.
I've read on the forum about several users that switched from CPAP (or APAP) to BiPAP who fell
in love at first breath. More exhalation relief, smoother pressure transitions, more natural breathing.
I didn't want to go into this with too high of an expectation in order to limit disappointment. So
I thought "here goes", masked up, gave a deep breath to trigger AutoStart, and snuggled in.
What a surprise! The machine was louder than I ever expected. Leaks were so bad that I cranked
down on my mask. I could feel every pressure transition from IPAP to EPAP and back. I could
listen to those transitions make the loudness vary. Took me a long time to fall asleep. I awoke at least
once, and probably more times. Not a good night at all. Oy vey!
In the morning I had to get ready to go to work. No time to look at data, especially since I had yet
to install SleepyHead and Encore Basic. So off I ran to work, wondering all day about my foray into
BIPAPland.
That evening I installed SleepyHead, figured out how to upload my data, and took a look at my graphs.
(See them below.) I really wanted to see how the auto algorithm varied my pressures. What I found
was two straight lines -- one at 16 (EPAP min) and one at 25 (IPAP max). What the heck? SleepyHead is
only displaying my settings, not the varying pressures of the auto algorithm.
And then it hit me. In my tired rush the night before, I neglected to switch the Mode setting from
"BiPAP" to "Auto". So I had spent the entire night with my pressures wildly swinging from 16 to 25 with
each and every breath. PS was therefore a constant 9 -- way too high. No wonder my night sucked.
Take a look at the night's SleepyHead graphs. All those events. All of those centrals. And all of it
caused by one bad setting.
