Newbie to it all !

[DKR]

I have been reading the forum for a few days and decided to just jump on in.
I am 58 years old, and was diagnosed with the OSA and prescribed the AirSense10 Elite, with pressure setting of 9cm of water pressure.
I am so new to all this I really don't understand it at all yet. I have slept 4 nights with the machine, 4 hours the first night and 8 hours the 2 nights after and then woke up last night and I must have taken the pillow off at some point without realizing it.
It really is not as bad as I thought it would be but it is still very much hard to adjust to.

Can you please explain the report I was given:

Duration of testing: 380.4 minutes (home study, insurance would not pay for me to go into sleep center without this)
Respiratory events index: 27 (number per hour)
5 Obstructive apneas
22 Hypopneas
22 flow limitation breaths with snoring

Summary of Oxygen: The lowest 02 saturation during the study was 79%
Patient spent 19 minutes below 02 saturation of 90%

Heart Rate 97 Maximum Hear Rate 50 Minimum

I don't understand the sleepyhead stuff but will do much more reading.

I have had insomnia for 25 years, take medicine to help get to sleep but still wake up all during the night unable to go back to sleep. Have snored all my life, husband had been very tolerable of this.
Thank you and I will try not to ask to may dumb questions.

[Julie]

Other people will explain more of what you're seeing, but one tip that could make a difference is that if you sleep mostly on your back, do whatever you can to stop doing it, putting pillows, etc. behind you, because back sleeping causes more apneas, hypopneas, snoring, etc.

[DKR]

Thank you, I never willingly sleep on my back as I have a bad low back and it just hurts to much.

[Pugsy]

RobySue does a good job of explaining the sleep study itself
http://adventures-in-hosehead-land.blog ... -test.html

I have a tutorial on understanding the basic data in SleepyHead...look in my signature line for that link.
Read up on things and then come back and ask a question if something needs clarification...there are no dumb questions.

There's a glossary of terms commonly seen in the software reports.
http://sleepyhead.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... p/Glossary

There's a pretty steep learning curve when it comes to all this cpap/therapy stuff but just start with the basics and read a lot and eventually everything will become clear to you ...just don't get frustrated if it takes a little while.
Heck..it took me 3 days to figure out what DME meant. True story.

[Wulfman...]

Welcome to the forum.
We were ALL "new" to this when we started.
Lots of new things to learn, terminology, etc.


Den

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