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[helpingdad]

wow, it seems the long post i just spent a lot of time writing has disappeared now that i registered. excuse any difficulty with the formatting of this but my enter key is not working now. my father who is 87 was only recently diagnosed (though has probably had for awhile) with sleep apnea, severe, actually. he has had a resmed 9? machine for a couple months now. i have never been very informed though i was there when he got it about how to read the different screens on the machine. it seems like most the people communicating on here are actually experts with all these charts and graphs and understanding them. i'm still at the point where i'm just learning how to read the very most basic report of sleep from the night before. the screen just shows 3 simple factoids, hours of use, mask fit and AHI's. it took a lot of inquiring to find out something minimally about how to interpret the AHI's. i will be going back to my dad's this week and paying closer attention now to these numbers. besides, wanting to learn more about how to access and read the various reports that may be available on the machine, i am primarily concerned now that he is having too much leakage and probably too many apnea incidents. he wears a fairly simple mask that just covers the nose, no pillows? he did have a full face mask that based on the brand, etc, everyone was saying was really a good mask...that may be, but whenever it got up to full pressure, it would just leak and leak. finally, when we got them to switch it out for this one, that problem seemed to greatly reduce. also, this mask is easier for him to take apart, clean, put back together...and he seemed to like it better at first anyway. the problem is now i think this mask is leaking a lot as well. he has a beard so i know it could have been part of the problem with the last one but i don't think really with this one. last time i was there i would either hear, or read that it was leaking quite a bit. a couple times i tried to tweak it w/o waking him. i have no idea what i'm doing. was successful a time or two and not others. when i see that screen that shows the 3 pieces of info from the last night's sleep it shows a sad face for the mask fit. i don't remember what the AHI's were but i now know they should be under 5...ideally and i think they have usually been higher than that. pretty sure i remember seeing at least one time 17 so...why does the mask leak so easily? my father doesn't realize it and thinks it worked ok the next day or that he would hear it if it was leaking but this is not really the case now so...we will go see his neurologist in a couple weeks who should get an updated report before then of the last month or so. if anyone has any tips, suggestions i would really appreciate it, i read some of what's on here and i notice people talking about washing their face before using. my father usually showers in the morning. i don't know if this would help at all tp wash his face before going to bed but again, seeking any helpful hints, possibilities...thanks for reading if you made it this far!

[Bill44133]

Welcome to the Forum
Yes your father needs to wash his face to perfect the seal. It is a pain but if you want to stop the leaks it is necessary.
It is also important to make sure he uses some type of baby wipes to wipe the mask down in the morning. That will add life to the mask.

A lot of the people here use SleepyHead Software to monitor their therapy.
Here is a link for the tutorial how to use it: viewtopic/t88983/Pugsys-PointersSleepyH ... Hints.html
Her is the link to download the software: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sleepyhead/files/

I would suggest you monitor your fathers therapy with the software since he is new to the whole process.

I wish you good luck with your father.

[kaiasgram]

Could your dad be mouth-leaking in addition to mask-leaking? With the nasal mask one has to be able to keep the mouth closed or else therapy air escapes out instead of going back into the airway where it's needed. Lots of folks have trouble with mouth opening especially in the beginning. Getting the software and examining the leak information will help -- you can often spot mouth opening by the way the leak graph looks.

[helpingdad]

hi,

i'm trying to reply to both of the last two posts but not sure how this will work. i didn't really see a way to reply to the first one. also, i didn't think anyone had written as i got no message in my email and it didn't look like anything was on the site either. had to extra navigate to find these two replies. guess i'm a little slow.. anyway, i will try looking at those links sent in the first email. thank you. that will probably take me awhile to figure out also but will wait til i try before starting in with all my questions about using that.

i will ask my dad to wash his face...hope he can get in the habit/remember to do it regularly before going to bed. again, 87, learning a number of new habits at once and having some memory problems. as for the mouth breathing, i'm not sure but i didn't think he was doing that too much. hopefully, i can learn more soon. going there tonight thru thu and will see if i can learn more from the sleepyhead software. he does have a full face mask/quattro something, i think? but that one really leaked a lot, practically non-stop once it would get up to full pressure, so has been using the other now.

finally, i dunno if it's better for him to side sleep as he says he likes to do, but again, that seems almost not possible with the mask as it gets more easily shifted around once he's on his side and there will probably be even more leakage. i saw something about special pillows designed to go with these machines/masks but don't know too much about those yet or whether it would be a worthwhile purchase.

thanks a lot for responding to my post and i will know that i have to check harder before i think that no one has replied.

[kaiasgram]

Stay online for a sec, I'm getting some info for you.

[kaiasgram]

In the User Control Panel, go to the Board Preferences tab, and then click on Edit Posting Defaults (on the left). Make sure you have the last item, "Notify me upon replies by default" option, checked (Yes).

Mouth-leaking shouldn't be a significant issue with a full face mask since the mask also covers the mouth. Mask leaking can still be a problem with a full face mask though. You had mentioned that your dad was using a "cover the nose only" mask, which raised the question of mouth-leaking for me.

Keep us posted.

[neallo]

First things first.
1. Need to find out if her is a mouth breather. Simple to figure out. When you walk into room while he is sleeping is his mouth open. Does he complain of dry mouth borderline painfully dry when he awakens? If answer to either question or both is yes then he is a mouth breather, which means go to full face mask (ffm).
That brings me to the second.

2. Both masks probably aren't fitted properly. I am sure this is the main source of the leaks. At the DME he was probably sitting in the upright position, but the human face changes shape when we go from sitting to laying, mainly due to gravity. Another thing is your face also changes from laying in the supine (on the back) and laying on the side. Each of these positions have a different gravitational affect on the face. YES the beard is also another consideration, yes it leads higher leaks, stleast mine does. To fix this issue just folks the instructions from the manufacturer's Manuel, but follow them in his chosen method of sleep , which I'd on his side as you started earlier. It will be difficult to do for you are not the patient, but needs to be done, so good luck with that. Before you go any father you need to address the leaks, because as we know leaks affect all the numbers and graphs, so while you do need to download sleepy head to look at the numbers, but the numbers are meaningless until leaks are conquered. All of this if l is just IMHI