First night Cpap questions

[yaya69]

i had my first night on cpap last night and had a few issues. 1 I couldnt get nasal prongs to sit in my nose as the nurse did and it kept making glugging noises. Imanaged to sleep on my side but kept waking up feeling like i was being suffocated. My mouth was extremely dry and i have a humidifier as part of the machine but droplets of water were going up my nose, I turned the humidifier up but it made no difference, so turned back to 3 where the nurse set up to. I also noted that if you dont keep your mouth shut when u breathe in it feels like u r choking. I know its going to take a while to get used to it and get the hang of it the dr said it can take up to 8 weeks so i will keep trying and be patient. Any suggestions would be appreciated.


Just as a observation i had to go to the hospital for my Cpap machine training there were 4 of us and at the end the nurse wanted all of us to try and sleep so she turned the lights out and we laid on beds for half and hour. I noticed one of the ladies continued to snore even with the machine running. Is that normal?

Louise

[Julie]

Hi, good for you for trying it out - you will get it working! A couple of things - a dry mouth usually means that once you're asleep, you breathe through your mouth, and that means you're not getting treated. The nasal prongs (or any nasal mask) may work for some people, but a lot of us have to use a 'full face' mask (just a nasal one that also covers your mouth, letting you breathe however you like but still getting the air down instead of out). Some popular ones are the Quattro, Hybrid, Ultra Mirage, etc. If you can get the DME to let you try some on, in different sizes and while lying down, you can get an idea of which one might work for you. Also, turn the humidifier down if you are getting wet, or else make sure the machine's on a lower level than you are so the water doesn't go down the hose, but up.

If you are using the ramp feature (or 'delay') where you start off at night with a low pressure that over 5-20 mins. builds to your prescribed one, it's very likely that it's so low you can't breathe... part of the reason most of us turn off the feature altogether after a few tries and just let the machine start off at the scripted pressure. If you go to the User Control Panel - small letters just above the posts, on the left side, and then fill out your Profile with full names and model #'s of all your equipment - and please choose 'text' vs icons, at the bottom, plus your prescribed pressure, we can see right away what's what and be able to advise better.

As far as that lady snoring goes... it shouldn't happen, but when testing you, they often (for instance) ask you to lie on your back (the worst position for provoking apneas) to get a 'worst-case scenario' of your response for their records, and that lady might have been what's called being titrated, or put on different pressures to see what worked for her.

[Mary Z]

You will get it working. For many of us it is trial and error until we get the right mask and humidity setting.
I wish my doc/sleep lab had offered classes on CPAP, it would have helped me a lot and just been very interesting.
Mary Z.

[Janknitz]

One of the reasons we're so insistent here that people post their equipment is so that we can really help.

Nasal prong masks are very rare, but nasal pillow masks are common, and your post makes me wonder which you really have?
You can see what a nasal prong mask looks like here: https://www.cpap.com/productpage/innome ... -kit.html#
And a nasal pillow mask here: https://www.cpap.com/productpage/resmed ... dgear.html (be sure to click on the photo of the part that goes against your nose and compare it to the photo of the nasal prongs on that page)

Why is this important? Nasal PRONG masks are designed to go IN the nose, nasal pillow masks are designed to rest AGAINST the nostrils but not really in them, except for a very small bit of the pillow tip.

I don't mean to insult you at all, but when people don't know the difference, they sometimes refer to nasal pillow masks as "prongs" when they are not. You may be absolutely correct that they are nasal prongs, but we don't have enough info at this point to be certain. And to compound matters, some RT's, nurses, DME staff members THINK that nasal pillows go IN the nose. So they fit them incorrectly and cause all sorts of problems for newbies. That could account for the poor fit and "gurgling" you're complaining of, but without more details we can't help.

As far as the dry mouth, as has been said already, it indicates that you are opening your mouth and the air that is supposed to be used to splint your airway open is rushing out your mouth instead. If you have a properly fitting mask and are wearing it correctly, you may get sufficient airflow that you will not need to open your mouth, so before going for chin straps or a full face mask, try to give us more info about your mask (make and model, i.e. "Nasal Aire", "Swift FX", "Opus 360") and details about whether you are trying to fit the prongs/pillows in or against your nose. You can look at various nasal prong and nasal pillow masks on cpap.com to find a picture of your mask if you can't find any markings on the mask or documentation that came with it.

We can help if we have enough information to go on.

[Yaya]

I realised from your posts i have nasal pilows, thank you for your replies. I turned the humidity down which helped. I had a better second night. It was much more comfortable.
Louise