Follow Up Appointment

[eDiddy]

HI All -
Just had my first follow up with the sleep doctor after 1 month of CPAP usage. Not quite sure if I am happy with the experience. He went over the sleep study results (which I had already requested and read), and commented that because of my desaturation to 81% and below 89% for 1/3 of the night I should never sleep without my CPAP. No problem there. (My wife won't let me anyway, even if I wanted to). Commented about my AHI of 51 being bad.

Then he commented that and that I need to get serious about losing weight, as "a pressure of 8 is pathetic" with the severity that you had during your sleep study. When combining the severity with the low amount of treatment pressure, his belief is that I can be "cured" of OSA if I can drop my BMI far enough. OK, I will work on that.

He took one quick look at the report that I printed out for him and saw AHI of 1.6. He was happy with that. As he was on his way out, I asked about the average vibratory snore index portion (10.0) of the report, and whether I should be concerned about that. He paged back through and said, it is probably because of the use of a Liberty mask and mouth breathing (which he corrected me when I said that I have always mouth breathed my whole life). I know that I have snored and breathed through my mouth for over 20 years (the doctor also commented that you don't start mouth breathing until OSA starts...so I guess that on that basis, I have had OSA for a long time.) But, let's change the pressure a bit to see if anything changes.

Quick question. I started out treatment and went about 2 weeks without snoring really showing up on my reports. OA and Hypopnia have been pretty steady throughout the month. Then, it became a regular occurrance to have snores start to appear averaging about 10.0 per night, but going as high as 79 and 147. Most things stayed the same, such as leak. Is is common for things like that to pop up over time as my body gets use to CPAP perhaps?

As most of you note when starting out, you have good days and better days. It takes time. So, I am being patient. I saw what untreated sleep apnea did to my father, so that is motivation for me.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for sharing their experience. The forum has been quite helpful.

[Pugsy]

How do you route your hose? Sometimes movement of the hose will create noise and the machine will think the noise is caused by snores. Does the hose go across anything that could create extra noise?
Has anyone listened to you when you sleep to confirm if you still snore a lot?

[eDiddy]

Hi Pugsy -
I thought about that as well. Hose is currently routed along side of bed between me and the covers. My wife has waken me up several times and mentioned that I was snoring.