Help! Please! 4th Sleep Study & I woke up with terrible headache!

[gkhtoys1202]

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated! I cannot find any info. to help me understand my sleep study this week and it will be months before I get the report from my pulmonary dr.! O.K. here's the review: diagnosed with OSA in 2006 and I weighed 310 lbs at the time and my pressure was 6. I lost 130 pounds 2 years later so I was able to get off of the cpap briefly. Gained the weight back in 6 months and had to return to cpap. 2nd sleep study in 2014, I weighed 300 lbs. and my pressure had to be reset to 12. Shortly after that I had to begin nighttime oxygen due to pulse ox sats were in the 60's. Now, 4 years later I have lost 100 pounds (thanks to a change in diet and gastric sleeve surgery 5 months ago) so I requested a new titration sleep study last week when I had a follow-up with my pulmonary specialist. I now weigh 200 pounds but, I rely heavily on wearing my cpap and using oxygen! My compliance percentage is somewhere between 97%-99.8% so I am faithful in wearing my cpap except for an occasional overnight hospital stay or emergency or sickness where I can't breathe through my nose. My question is this...why did I wake up with a tremendous headache DURING the night and then again in the morning????? This doesn't happen when I'm at home! I think my tech at the sleep lab wanted to "help me" get off of having to wear this machine at night and I think he lowered the settings too low! Is that even possible? I had to fill out a questionnaire before bedtime (no complaints at that time) and then again AFTER my titration sleep study (massive headache mentioned and noted). Should I call my pulmonary specialist? I can't see him for a couple of more months due to there's no open appointments until Nov. for him! I forgot to mention that I am a married female, 53 years old and stand at 5' 4" tall. Please be kind to me...I'm just starting out on this board. Ask me any more questions and I would be happy to give an answer. Thank you for taking the time to read this!

[Pugsy]

Are you still using added oxygen in addition to using cpap all this time?

If so, why and did they use added oxygen during the sleep study?

Welcome to the forum.

[bombayone]

Probably nothing to worry about or pursue other than to satisfy your curiosity. I hope that you do well and feel better.

[gkhtoys1202]

Yes, I am still on oxygen at night only. I think the sleep tech turned my oxygen levels off and it caused the headache...will it show up on my report? I've never had a headache AFTER a sleep study and I've always gotten a great night's sleep! That is why I am so puzzled at this! I also did not dream!

[Pugsy]

If your oxygen levels dropped during the sleep study for any reason it will show up on the sleep study report and very likely is the cause of the headache from hell. Sleep studies are not normally done with oxygen added because they want to see if your O2 levels drop and how much just to start with. If you need O2 for some reason and fixing the apneas with cpap doesn't fix the low O2 issues...then if the tech turned it off...whatever issue you have causing the low O2 probably reared its ugly head and left you with the headache.

From my understanding it isn't so much the low O2 but the imbalance between the low O2 and the carbon dioxide in the blood stream that causes the headache.

[gkhtoys1202]

Thank you so much for the info. Pugsy! I am awaiting a phone call from my pulmonary specialist's nurse right now with hopefully more info. I just can't wait until Nov. to find out what my test results are!

[palerider]

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated! I cannot find any info. to help me understand my sleep study this week and it will be months before I get the report from my pulmonary dr.! O.K. here's the review: diagnosed with OSA in 2006 and I weighed 310 lbs at the time and my pressure was 6. I lost 130 pounds 2 years later so I was able to get off of the cpap briefly. Gained the weight back in 6 months and had to return to cpap.

Not being on cpap is probably what prompted the weight gain.

[gkhtoys1202]

I called the Pulmonary Specialist's Office yesterday and the nurse called me back after their last patient. Now I only have 2 more months to wait until I can get an appointment to get the results...they may have tried to switch up the oxygen and then drop it for the last half of the night-that's all we can figure out so far as to why I woke up twice with a massive headache! I just wish we could CLONE my fantastic dr. now! He is super booked until late Oct. because he's such a caring, talented and patient doctor! Palerider-my weight gain wasn't caused by not wearing my cpap-it was my return to binge eating that caused me to gain all of the weight back. Now, that I've had gastric sleeve and 85% of my stomach removed there is no chance of ever binge eating the weight back on...yeah! My diet is just protein, protein and then more protein and I can only eat about 4 oz at the max!