Frustrations from the last few nights...

[gorkon]

Been a week on my Mirage Liberty and a have a few frustrations NOT all about the mask. Some are frustrations I have had before.

I seem to be between sizes on the pillows. I tried the medium pillows and my wife made the comment she thought I snored PLUS they would leak somewhat. Actually, even the large ones seem to move around and towards the end of my sleep cycle, they float and sometimes come completely out of the nare. Adjusting this in bed is impossible.

I have noticed you have to be very careful about tightening the straps. I think why alot of people seem to suffer pain from this mask is they over tighten it. The DVD that comes with it tells you the mask should float so I assume it should feel slightly loose.

Some of the pieces of this mask are also easy to loose! I have to be extremely careful with the flap valve as it's clear (it should be a DARK silicone so you can see it!) and small. Same goes with the ports cap. Cleaning IS easier then my Swift II and some days I just pop the pillows out, wash them and run a soapy washcloth around the mouthguard.

The clips are still flimsy, but I seem to have worked it out. Bending the clip out a hair seems to have made it work better.

The mask DOES work better, for me, then my Swift II even with the frustrations I am having. I feel MUCH better with the Liberty then with the Swift/Chinstrap combo.

Now for my non mask frustrations...the Doctor says I should be getting 7 hours of sleep however I have NEVER in at least 10 years got more then 6-7 in a night unless I was extremely tired. I try going to bad earlier then usual, but I still end up waking up an hour earlier then expected. I tried Ambien and it just made me feel weird. I'll mention this to the doctor at the next checkup. I try not to stress about this, but I try and I simply can't get more then 6 and a half hours in a normal night.

Work interferes with sleep. I am a system admin and the times I can work on the system seem to all run into the night. My last outage wasn't too horrible, but I ended up being there til 3 am. One thing I do know is I can't do the 24 hour outages anymore....I have to make sure the boss knows this. I am a dedicated worker and can often find myself up way past my normal sleep time by tenaciously working on a issue at night. It's getting better, but I find it strange that ALL 3 of the main sysadmins/dba's either have OSA or are getting sleep studies. The main DBA has a sleep study that ends this morning...have to find out how it worked for him as it was his titiration study. It would be interesting to see how common that OSA is in the syadmin/dba circles.

[cflame1]

Well it's not just sysadmins and DBA's... there are a number of IT folks on here.

[Wulfman...]

Well it's not just sysadmins and DBA's... there are a number of IT folks on here.

You got that right!
I don't know if we just have a tendency to gravitate to Internet forums or what, but there's a lot of us here. Not only IT, but "tech"-related fields.
Too many years of lousy sleep, I guess......or sedentary lifestyles of being parked in front of these screens......
It's NOT one of the benefits we bargained for.

Welcome to the club.

Den