Had first night!

[BlackSpinner]

Freakin CPAP, I just woke up hyperventilating covered in sweat having the worst nightmare I've had in many years!

Oh wait, nightmare or not that was the first dream I've had in years!!!




(Full Disclosure the 2nd and 1st paragraph were written well apart from eachother!

Check your data for that time period. For some people REM sleep requires more pressure.

Congratulations on getting into REM sleep!

[Thellra]

This is what victory looks like:



But what I'm wondering is:

Every time I wake up after having the mask on, I could not care less about the pressure, it feels like it doesn't exist, but almost every time I take the mask off without remembering it looks like this




Would there be any disadvantage to getting my primary care to bump the lower end up to 10 or even 10.5 I can't find anywhere that I've taken the mask of when the pressure is that high.

[HerbM]

45 minutes to fall asleep is pretty good for the first few days.

(I have had a really easy time and yet several nights it took me much longer than that; several times in the first week to 10 days, I woke up during the night for various reasons, and it took longer just to get BACK to sleep.)

While it can be irritating to lie there awake for 45 minutes you will adjust.

As was already mentioned: 'events' while you are fully awake don't count -- they are just annoying when you are hoping to "get your score down".

[Pugsy]

Would there be any disadvantage to getting my primary care to bump the lower end up to 10 or even 10.5 I can't find anywhere that I've taken the mask of when the pressure is that high.

What are your current settings now?
I asked because sometimes the pressure graphs don't show correct pressure in SH (a little bug)
It looks like your minimum pressure per these reports is 9 cm.

Were you thinking to increase the minimum from 9 to 10 or 10.5 in an attempt to better prevent those little OA clusters you see right before you seem to be taking the mask off?
It's possible that the cluster you see is causing some sort of arousal and then you take the mask off while semi awake or something.

When you post your reports...it would be really helpful if we could see the top events graph and the AHI graphs on the left side.
The AHI graph is redundant information and not needed. You can turn it off in Preferences/graph tab.
What is helpful for us is to see the left side event category breakdown for AHI in those bars
and these graphs on the right side..
Events
Flow rate
Pressure
Leak
You can resize graphs to get the 4 graphs in one screen shot.
I have examples in my SleepyHead tutorial thread at the top of the Announcements section.

It's hard to tell just by seeing the flow rate graph but it looks like you have several different flags showing up on the flow rate graph and I can't tell what they are. You may have a few other minor little things that would also maybe respond to little more minimum pressure. Hard to say at this point but your reasoning about the cluster of OAs is valid.
I just don't think you need a full cm or more increase in the minimum...You might only need a 0.5 increase in minimum.
I call it "breaking up the clusters"...sometimes in REM sleep or when we sleep on our backs we have little clusters of OAs or hyponeas and not much of anything else the rest of the night for whatever reason so the overall AHI looks really good but we have a few clusters of something that might be worth preventing.

So yes, something you might want to talk over with your doctor. He may or may not care about anything but overall AHI though.
No real disadvantage for a small increase in minimum pressure that I can think of except maybe aerophagia for some people.

[Thellra]

More like this?


Yeah, last night sucked!

Got in a fight with my wife over putting my mask on don't even remember...

Had a visit with my Primary Care who prescribed the APAP she said do whatever keeps you wearing it.

Last night the settings were 9-15 CM H20 with no flex anything and without ramp

Going to give 9.5 a shot tonight as well as cleaning my face better and washing my mask to get my face oils off of it.

[Pugsy]

Yes, report image like that. Thank you for doing that. Makes evaluation so much easier and accurate.

Was the mask removal part of the fight or just happened like other nights when mask gets removed?
If it was like the other nights...go back and look to see if you had any spikes in leaks prior to mask removal.
If this is typical it looks like the big mask leak likely was the cause of the mask removal in the middle of the night. It sure wasn't the pressure or events. See that big spike nearing 90 L/min...while 90 L/min is barely in large leak territory the leak probably woke you up and you removed the mask and not remember it.
It's fairly common thing to happen. We usually tell people to use a little tape on the straps in a couple of places so that when removing the mask the person wakes up a little more so they can stop the removal process.

There are minimal snores and hyponeas showing and not any real clustering but a change in minimum mostly likely won't cause any issues at all. Most of the time when using APAP and the doctor says "whatever"...we pretty much can do whatever we please. The maximum setting often is irrelevant.. The minimum is the most critical.
In your situation the maximum is irrelevant.

Quite honestly..your current 9 minimum is barely increasing at all...so the machine isn't sensing anything it wants to try to fix.
So on paper ..the 9 cm minimum is working well.
The little pointy spikes..those are test pressure probes and just part of the machine doing its job.
On paper there is no apparent critical need to change anything.
If you think those few snores and hyponeas are maybe disturbing sleep then a little more minimum might help...might not also.
There's zero need to do anything with whatever maximum pressure is set at...you aren't going anywhere near it so it sort of is a moot point. Maximum doesn't affect response time if it is never reached.

So on paper your reports are quite acceptable in terms of what we see.
If hours of sleep using the machine is shortened due to premature mask removal then that needs to be worked on.
If leaks are waking you up..they also need to be worked on even if they don't go into large leak territory.
If you want to increase that minimum pressure..you can but I doubt it will make any huge difference...but wouldn't hurt to try.