cpap for long term/lightweight camping?

[CKayaker]

I am planning a 5 day/4 night sea kayaking trip to the Everglades in Jan. 2009. I would like to take my cpap with me. I have done several camping trips without my cpap and I'm not willing to do it again; I feel terrible by the end of the week. I have read several articles about people using deep cycle batteries and inverters but I don't have the luxury of being able to carry that much weight or give up that space in the boat. Are there other options that I'm missing? I have looked at a couple of cpaps that are designed for travel but the batteries that come with them only give 11 hours of charge. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[RosemaryB]

I've thought about this one a lot. I recently got a dental device for OSA, the TAP 3. The reason was to use for power outages and camping. I'm not endorsing this way to go, since I just got it and I'm not sure how well it will work. However, if it works well enough I'm going to be thrilled to go camping, especially with my grandsons who live a plane ride away and I can't carry a battery on the plane. As for results, I'd settle for anything under 5.0 AHI, though with my cpap I'm usually under 1.0 AHI. I expect it will be several months before I know, or longer since I plan to have a sleep study if it looks like it's working based on my machine numbers (I'll use it on the lowest cpap setting as a test to see if works, then read the software). I posted some info about it on the thread linked below. I'll report my progress there later, probably in a few months. If you are interested in this route, you might want to keep tabs on it.

viewtopic/t37054/My-new-backup-plan-for ... ges--.html

[CKayaker]

Thanks - I look forward to following your progress - Good luck!

[Guest]

I am planning a 5 day/4 night sea kayaking trip to the Everglades in Jan. 2009. I would like to take my cpap with me. I have done several camping trips without my cpap and I'm not willing to do it again; I feel terrible by the end of the week. I have read several articles about people using deep cycle batteries and inverters but I don't have the luxury of being able to carry that much weight or give up that space in the boat. Are there other options that I'm missing? I have looked at a couple of cpaps that are designed for travel but the batteries that come with them only give 11 hours of charge. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

You may also see my similar CAPA comments on the CMS-50E. Last summer I did a 70 mile backpack trip through the 6 Yosemite High Sierra Camps in 8 days. And I was not carrying a car battery for my CPAP unit! My pack ended up being ~23 pounds. We slept in tent cabins with 2-6 people, some stangers. I was very concered about no CPAP machine, snoring and being thrown to the bears at night. I bought an inexpensive chin strap from CPAP.com for $25, tried it at home, then did not take the CPAP machine on the entire trip to the west coast and Yosemite. According to my wife I went to sleep quickly, some short light snoring (a few minutes at most) and no apena events. So no complaints from anyone who shared a tent cabin with me and I felt fine during the days. Pretty remarkable for me. I know other CPAP users who swear that without their CPAP machine they are miserable during the night and the next day. If you want more information look up my amateur call, KE1R in QRZ.com and you can find my email address.
TOM (Santa Fe, NM) living at 7,000 feet

[CKayaker]

ok - after a lot of research I settled on purchasing an Everest 2 cpap with a battery pack with 3 additional battery cells. This will give me, conceivably, 4 full nights of cpap assisted sleep at around 10 pounds of weight. I have slept with the Everest 2 for about week and have also run it on batteries for a couple of nights with no issues. I'm stoked. I will let you know how the trip works out.

[sleepycarol]

You may also see my similar CAPA comments on the CMS-50E. Last summer I did a 70 mile backpack trip through the 6 Yosemite High Sierra Camps in 8 days. And I was not carrying a car battery for my CPAP unit! My pack ended up being ~23 pounds. We slept in tent cabins with 2-6 people, some stangers. I was very concered about no CPAP machine, snoring and being thrown to the bears at night. I bought an inexpensive chin strap from CPAP.com for $25, tried it at home, then did not take the CPAP machine on the entire trip to the west coast and Yosemite. According to my wife I went to sleep quickly, some short light snoring (a few minutes at most) and no apena events. So no complaints from anyone who shared a tent cabin with me and I felt fine during the days. Pretty remarkable for me. I know other CPAP users who swear that without their CPAP machine they are miserable during the night and the next day. If you want more information look up my amateur call, KE1R in QRZ.com and you can find my email address.
TOM (Santa Fe, NM) living at 7,000 feet

I suppose you took a sleep lab along to make sure you had NO apneas? Yea, right!!

Maybe if you have mild sleep apnea and slept on your side -- maybe -- still doubtful.