Newbie struggles..advice welcome

[Fiji]

Hello all! I have spent the morning going through this site and am so appreciative of the information and insight.

I have a few questions and any help would be welcome.
I had my first sleep study done about 10 years ago and it was deeply traumatic for a variety of reasons. They were unable to make a dx. Needless to say, I fought tooth and nail to get a second one done but was finally convinced to try again earlier this year. It took two sleep studies to figure out that I have sleep apnea ONLY during REM. I was given a CPAP and just finished my second night. No changes but as Ive read here that is not surprising. What IS surprising to me is how much I am struggling with this diagnosis and being put on CPAP. I truly feel like I have failed somehow. Logically, I get that this is such a treatable condition and other people have issues that are much worse, but I am really, really struggling with it and I have no clue why.

My non-weepy question is about sleep study results. I had 203 stage shifts and 228 arousals. Is this apnea related?

Thanks in advance for any insight

[Pugsy]

My non-weepy question is about sleep study results. I had 203 stage shifts and 228 arousals. Is this apnea related?

Probably related to the apnea.
If you are like me (and my OSA is 5 times worse in REM) every time you hit REM your apnea events flare up and bounce you out of REM and you have to go through the sleep stages time and time again and you don't get the right cycling of the sleep stages in the needed percentages of each stage.

Now there can be what is called spontaneous arousals for which we don't know the cause of the arousal but it's not because of any breathing issues. Was there a mention as to how many arousals were spontaneous on that report?

When you have time please add your equipment to your profile like I have mine.
wiki/index.php/Registering_Equipment_in_User_Profile

Hopefully you have a full data machine so you can use available software and make sure that the pressure settings are doing a good job for you
https://sleep.tnet.com/equipment

There's not much chance of feeling better if the therapy isn't optimal. So make sure it is at least optimal before settling in for the "give it some time" stuff.

[overshoot]

Newbie as well, and I highly recommend downloading and installing the sleepyhead software, so that you can look at your data each morning and make continuous small improvements to improve your therapy.

I would have had to wait for weeks to get some analysis done, but the people on this board have a nice enough to help me with my screenshot results, and I've already improved my settings and my AHI, as well as getting some constructive advice about my leakage, which is currently what I'm working to fix.

I hear you on feeling like you are overreacting to the diagnosis, and it weighing heavy on you. I think for me, once I got past that I can go to sleep with the machine, and that I feel better during the day, as well as the fact that there is this community out there, it helped me keep a little more positive about it. It is depressing a bit to think that we will need to be on this machine each night, but there could always be technology breakthroughs in the future, and as many have stated, I perhaps will eventually start to feel normal about it, and won't want to have a night without it because we've gotten the therapy to really work for us.

Good luck to you, and try your best to focus on any improvements, even if small.

[Fiji]

Hi pugsy- thank you for the reply. I just added my machine so hopefully it will show up. It suggested ‘dreammapper’ Software which I downloaded earlier today. Is sleepyhead different?

I have attached my sleep study results but it doesn’t look like it clarifies that they are ‘spontaneous’ arousals.

Thank you for your help!

[Fiji]

Thank you overshoot. I appreciated and really needed the kind words, my machine came with dreammapper software which I think may be the same thing? I will let you know tomorrow! Fiji

[Pugsy]

SleepyHead will give you a lot more detail than DreamMapper will.

See this thread for some examples and I think you will see what I mean.
viewtopic/t158560/How-to-post-images-for-review.html

To find SleepyHead go here and follow the link
https://sleep.tnet.com/equipment

It looks like from the sleep study report that they think that the bulk of those arousals are related to the REM dependent OSA that you have. You are probably bouncing around all night in the various sleep stages because your REM events won't let you sleep soundly.

Having OSA be worse in REM or only in REM isn't unusual. Quite common in fact.

[Fiji]

I don’t have a laptop right now so will have to wait on sleepyhead. Might be getting one soon tho!

[chunkyfrog]

Make sure the OS is Windows or Mac.
Google (Chrome) is worthless--if you need to use Sleepyhead.

[palerider]

Make sure the OS is Windows or Mac.

Or linux

[dh37]

Or linux

Wha? From your avatar I'd assume you're a BSD-only dude, and Linux is heresy!

[Jas_williams]

Or linux

Wha? From your avatar I'd assume you're a BSD-only dude, and Linux is heresy!

BSD works as well apparently never tried it but Mark was saying it used to work and he didn't think it was broken

[palerider]

Or linux

Wha? From your avatar I'd assume you're a BSD-only dude, and Linux is heresy!

Nah, I just like beastie.

I'm actually more of an openindiana/derivitives person, but linux makes a good desktop.

[palerider]

Or linux

Wha? From your avatar I'd assume you're a BSD-only dude, and Linux is heresy!

BSD works as well apparently never tried it but Mark was saying it used to work and he didn't think it was broken

It should, in theory, work on anything that has an applicable version of Qt available on it.