What happens if you don't use your APAP for a whole week?

[bigheadr]

Before I got on my APAP therapy, I have gone to Alaska for a whole week of fishing during the summer where there isn't any electricity. What happens if you don't use your APAP for a whole week? Am I destined not to go on these fishing trips anymore?

[dsg]

Well, let's put it this way: how much as the APAP helped you? How much of a difference in your stamina and the way you feel in the morning have you noticed? If you are without your APAP for a week, you will return to your pre-APAP behavior, with your previous rate of apneas, hypopneas, O2 desats and associated stresses to your cardiovascular system.

You'll notice that in the morning you'll be more tired. You'll notice that as the day progresses, your stamina will be lessened. By the end of the week you're likely to feel fairly sleep deprived, because you will be.

I'm not you, but if the choice were given to me to spend a week doing something terrific without my CPAP or miss doing it and get good sleep, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. "Sorry", I'd say, "thanks anyway. I'll stay home." I'm not you, though. It's not an easy decision, if the fishing trip is important to you.

There are battery-powered machines like the AEIOmed Aura (you see little ads for it in the upper right corner of cpaptalk.com all the time)....might you want to consider checking that out?

[th]

You can use a battery on some models. I know Chrisp can help you with that if you PM him.

I can tell you that when my wife cheats on her APAP treatment. It does make a difference. I noticed yesterday afternoon she felled a sleep at 7:00pm and slept off and on until we went to bed around 10:30pm. I ask her if she used her auto and she said she did. I checked her downloads and she use the machine a little less than 3 hours. Every time she cheats like this I can go back and check and see where she used the machine for less than 4 hours
th

[mikemoran]

There have been other threads on camping with CPAP. I remember one where the guy went backpacking for a whole week. I believe the Respironics and PB machines all can run on direct current current, you just need the right connector to use a motorcycle battery with them.

Do a search, he went into full detail of his set up.

[WAFlowers]

I don't know what a whole night without APAP would be like, much less a week. But my recent attempt at a short power nap without was a total disaster! Instead of 20 minutes of R+R I woke up every few minutes gasping and could actually feel my throat open as I came awake.

It was a very unpleasant feeling and only reinforced the necessity of compliance for me.

YMMV

[Guest]

Before I got on my APAP therapy, I have gone to Alaska for a whole week of fishing during the summer where there isn't any electricity. What happens if you don't use your APAP for a whole week? Am I destined not to go on these fishing trips anymore?

I wouldn't miss a week of fishing in Alaska for anything!

Here are some very interesting links about camping with cpap:

Battery Power Rules!

Sleeping With My CPAP in the Grand Canyon by Dave Buscher

[Wulfman]

I wouldn't miss a week of fishing in Alaska for anything!

PERIOD!!!

I'd try to make up for it later. After all, the doctors didn't seem too concerned that I didn't have a machine for almost a month after being diagnosed.

On the other hand, if there was a chance of having some kind of electricity available, I'd pack it along just in case. After seven months, I"m finding it hard to go to sleep without it.

Den

[Doc E.]

[quote="bigheadr"]Before I got on my APAP therapy, I have gone to Alaska for a whole week of fishing during the summer where there isn't any electricity. What happens if you don't use your APAP for a whole week? Am I destined not to go on these fishing trips anymore?

[Colorado Jan]

Whoa, Doc E! So you think this whole thing about CPAP is a psychological crutch? Interesting theory. We must be reading different literature...

I soooooo disagree with you....I'm not even very interested in how I feel, that's not the point of this treatment for me anyway. Feeling better is of course a very nice side product, but for me it is all about keeping my airway open and allowing oxygen to get to my cellular structure!

I have oxygen desats down to 50 and 60 percent ranges without CPAP...and I was told point blank that there was a possibility that I could have died on any given night. Just let that oxygen level slip a little lower...and whoops, there I go.

And although my heart is not showing damage yet...there was a very good chance of experiencing heart attack or stroke within the next 10 years or so....and I'm 52 right now. Too early to stroke out in my opinion.

So my sleep apnea is somewhat severe...but I truly believe OSA in any range from mild to severe is still doing a job on your heart and circulatory system. And the treatment is really such a simple thing...as you said, it is just forcing some air down your throat to keep it open. Such a simple road to improved health. And it seems to me very, very different than an over-the-counter pain killer.....Pain does not do damage to your body. OSA does.

So I'm glad you've developed a regime of not using your CPAP but I'd rather not join you.........

Ahhh, but the topic at hand is to go to the wilderness someplace without CPAP or deny yourself the pleasure of the great outdoors. Personally I've always been a fan of the great INdoors, but I would not go a week without CPAP. I'd invest in one of those battery powered thingamajigs and go. After all, you are saving all that money on hotel bills.....

Jan in Colo

[ozij]

Looks to me like someone decided to play doctor on the internet, and came up with a whole lot of well known analogies bordering on cliches.

Analogies are very very dangerous, because they might sound right, and be all wrong. Case in point: comparing CPAP to painkillers. Pain frequently is a signal of a problem that has to be treated. So is snoring that may signal the exitence of obstructions. Any treatments that would stop snoring without stopping obstruction could be compared to painkillers.

However, xPAP therapy treats the obstructions, by opening your airways and lowering the number of obstructions per hour. Which is like insulin injections treating your high sugar level by adding more insulin to your blood, and lowering the sugar level. I wonder if the good (?) doc (?) would recommend using insulin on an on and off basis as well, for the same reasons s/he uses xPAP intermitently.

Boomer, we don't know much about your general health or how bad you sleep apnea is. The person to ask about how stopping for a week will effect you is your doctor.

Bill and dsg know from personal experiece that they wouldn't give up xPAP ever for a week. Others know the opposite. I doubt there is one "right" answer to you question that any one here can give you.

If your doctor OKs the break, you might want a trial break at home, before you find yourself out in the wilderness without a xPAP, feeling miserable and wishing you had a machine along.

If it were me, I would do my best to find a battery or solar pack based solution.

O.

[WAFlowers]

Bill and dsg know from personal experiece that they wouldn't give up xPAP ever for a week. Others know the opposite. I doubt there is one "right" answer to you question that any one here can give you.

Agree 100%. And that is why I put "YMMV" at the end of my post.

In case anyone doesn't understand, literally YMMV is an acronym for "Your Mileage May Vary". Used in a context like this it means "my experience might not apply to your situation".

But then again, maybe it would.

What I would do is first speak with my doctor. If he OKs it then 2 weeks before the trip I'd run an experiment at home with not using xPAP. If it works OK, then you've got a week to recover from any effects and know that you'll fine for the week of the trip. If it doesn't work, you've got a week (or more) to get a battery to run your xPAP and some way to recharge it during the day; generator, solar panels, monkey turning a crank, etc. OK, maybe not the monkey; I don't think they'd like Alaska.

I enjoy camping and fishing, although I've never done anything like you'd be doing in Alaska. If it was me I'd go, but I'd go prepared. And a good part of that preparation is to become informed on your personal needs for xPAP and, if you can't get by without it, how to use it in a wilderness setting. It can be done!

[neversleeps]

I seriously doubt a whole lot will happen to you.

In my opinion, certain persons have a predisposition to become dependant [sic] either physocologically [sic] and physically on the machine just like certain people develop a [sic] addition [sic] to sleeping pills, pain killers or the like.

YIKES !!!!!!! (I think it's safe to say "Doc E." is not actually a doctor.)

Hmm... You know, now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure in addition to being psychologically addicted to my cpap machine, I'm also psychologically addicted to my pacemaker, my dialysis machine, my blood pressure medication, and my insulin.

Food for thought....

[Doc E.]

lol...

Of course I'm not a doctor!....
That name came about from a little incident over in Asia some years ago....

In any event.....
I've been following this site for several months now and after reading posts by the various persons I can certainly understand why my statements might be viewed with question, anger, resentment or even ridicule as most certainly there are persons here that do have some serious issues both medically as well as on other fronts and those issues naturally will cloud/color their understanding of my views I expressed.

I think originally this started out as a good thing.......
But, now I see most of this industry as a giant money making machine.

Because of my own lack of preparation and investigation I was relieved of several hundred dollars in insurance co-pays on a machine.
In fact I spent more on co-pays then I could have bought the machine for outright from this site.
All told the DME collected approximately 5 times what the machine could have been purchased for....and I'm sure that a decent profit is involved in the sale of the machine for this site so who knows what the local DME retailer actually made.

I seriously think a investigation by the federal government should be launched into this whole industry as the graff is absolutely incredible.

If someone is elderly or infirm with other health problems I can understand a certain amount of dependance on the machine and I do sympathize with them.....it was not my intent to mock anyone that is in such a situation with a genuine medical need.

But....I am seeing people who are completely healthy .... with no problems other then they are tired during the day.
Well...a lot of these people work jobs that run them on 12hr-18hr days and after that of course they are tired!...
Working for 18hrs a day on a consistant basis will shorten anyone's lifespan (i.e. DUH!).
They go see their medical doc and the new "buzzword" in the medical industry is sleep apnea so their medical doc sends them to a sleep doc who is more then happy to arrange for them to partake in a "sleep study"...lol
Now there is a interesting experience.

Let's throw Joe or Jane average from their normal bed at home into a hospital or research site bed, glue on 25 leads, show them a video, and then make them attempt to sleep with a infared camera and every other observation device known to man watching them...lol.
Of course they don't sleep well...lol

Then they wake up poor "Joe" who maybe finally got about 5 minutes of sleep in the last 4 hours and hook him to a machine and start turning up the air.
After about 2 hours they finally get the pressure up to the point Joe can actually get enough air to breath comfortably with that plastic octopus on his face....and he finally out of sheer exhaustion falls into slumber.
To top it all off...... in about a hour it's morning and Joe gets awakened rather abruptly when they turn off his air...lol

It's almost laughable what has happened to Joe and I'm betting the vast majority of people who go in for a sleep study if they really wanted to be honest would tell a similar tale.
So how much usable & accurate information did that night in the study really gather?....

Wouldn't it make more sense to send a person home with a pulseox recorder for 2-4 or even 6 weeks and really get a accurate picture of what is or what is not actually happening in real life at home?
Let's not just take a quick look at something and hit the panic button!...some common sense and a step back to really evaluate the situation in a rational and unemotional (i.e. non-panicked state) is certainly warranted.

One of my points is that I feel that the machines are not a solution to the problem.
The problem is the airway collapses....that is what needs to be addressed and corrected.
You can keep pumping up a tire that has a leak and goes flat on a car...but that doesn't fix the problem.
Call it a design flaw in the body or what ever you want.....but let the medical researchers develop a cure for the problem....not just a method of treating the symptoms.

Of course I'm sure my statements will be dismissed as well as attacked by some as coming from someone irrational with a axe to grind......
To a certain extent the axe grinding part is true.....I am angry with myself for not being more prepared and for being taken advantage of by a doctor and medical staff who simply took one look at me and threw me on the cpap assembly line with the rest....and I question the integrity of a doctor who after being questioned admits he knew about the legitimate availability of units from alternate sources for a fraction of the price of the DME I was sent to (which happened to be the same provider/system that
his own practice was operated out of)....in a large number of other industries what happened is a actual crime!


In any event,
I am curious about one thing....
Does anyone know what the figures are (percentage wise) for people who go to a sleep study and are NOT diagnosed with apnea?

[meister]

Why not get a Dental Device and slip it in during the fishing trip?
If it pulls your jaw forward and gets you some relief it is better
than nothing. I don't think I would skip a fishing trip. But a battery
option is not that hard to implement.

[ozij]

Well, that certainly make it easier to understand you first post. Though using a "Doc"-something moniker on health site, without even being one, and not adding one disclaimer to the post really isn't playing fair. Some inexperienced or possible less educated people might go about saying "but this doctor on the internet said..."

In any event,
I am curious about one thing....
Does anyone know what the figures are (percentage wise) for people who go to a sleep study and are NOT diagnosed with apnea?

To really know what's going on we would need to answer the following question:

How many people (percentagewise) would be diagnosed with apnea in a group representative of the general population?

How many people (percentagewise) would be diagnosed with apnea in a group representative of the general population by labs that make no money from the number of positive diagnoses?

How many people (percentagewise) would be diagnosed with apnea in a group representative of the general population by labs that do make money from a positive diagnosis.

People sent for sleep studies are suspected of having a sleep disturbance to start with - just like people sent to have their ankle X-rayed because of suspected fractures.

Wouldn't it make more sense to send a person home with a pulseox recorder for 2-4 or even 6 weeks and really get a accurate picture of what is or what is not actually happening in real life at home?

And a machine to measure brain waves so you would record the person's sleep stages, and a machine to measure chest movements vs. breath coming out of the nose/mouth in order to distinguish central apnea from obstructive apnea.

Lets start with what's available:
Do you have a machine that lets you follow the results of your treatment on a nightly basis? If you had one, and it recorded no apnea, couldn't you sue your doctor for maltreating you?

And if it did record apneas at some pressures, and none at others, wouldn't that make you feel a bit better about getting this treatment?

Oh, I almost forgot: Christine RRT (Registered Respiratory Therapist) told us long ago: You can get a pulsoximeter to check your results from your DME for free. All you need is your doctors prescription. And if you doctor refused to help you collect that data, change the doctor.

Doing this therapy with such a deep sense of distrust in needing it must be very very difficult. I hope for you that you will use all the possibilities at you disposal to get data you trust, and make decisions with which you are at peace.

Good luck -
O.
O.