Help! Keep taking mask off

[Roobin]

Hi, Everyone -- I've been on the hose for about 3 months now. I wouldn't say things are perfect -- I do wish I were sleeping more soundly and not being disturbed by occasional leaks and hose-pulls -- but I thought I was doing reasonably well adjusting to everything. But in the last few weeks, I am waking up (well, half-waking up) in the middle of the night, reaching over and turning off my machine, taking off the mask, and then falling back to sleep. This is happening about 3 times/week.

When I wake up maskless in the morning, I do recall taking it off. I also recall that my sleepy, 1/4-conscious intent was to put the mask back on "after a few minutes", but apparently I am falling back to sleep before doing so.

I don't know what woke me up in the first place or compelled me to take it off. Naturally, I looked at the data to see if there were any events immediately preceding my arousal. In a couple of instances, I did indeed have a cluster of OSAs.....but other times there were no events (not even leaks) preceding the mask removal / machine shut off.

Maybe I need to move my S9 to a place that's not so conveniently reached from my bed, thereby making it harder to turn off the machine: Even in a half-awake state, I can't imagine I'd take off the mask without turning off the machine....it would just be too noisy. So, perhaps this arrangement would force me to fully awaken, thus getting me to put the mask back on. However, I'm not crazy about the idea of completely waking myself up....my sleep hasn't improved all that much from CPAP therapy, so I'd hate to force a major "awake event".

Do any of you have tricks or ideas about what I can do to avoid this?

As always, thanks for your help. This forum is awesome!!!!

[ems]

I find that I take the mask off in the middle of the nite also. Then I wake up in the morning surprised I don't have it on. Funny thing is that I never did this when I first started CPAP over a year ago. I think this is very strange and have no idea what's going on. I wish I knew what I was thinking when I took the mask off and turned off the machine. Part of it I think is that I don't want to get fully awake which may be what happened last nite. The night before last I hardly slept and I wanted to sleep. Like you, my sleep hasn't improved either. I don't know what the answer is.

[woodworkerjunkie]

I wish I had an answer for you! I woke up a few nights ago, the mask was laying on the bed and my machine was still on and beeping at me (mask alert). I don't remember taking it off, and when I checked my results the next day, it had only been off my face for about 2 or 3 minutes! Still has me baffled! I just put it back on and went back to sleep, slept for another 3 hours, till time to get up.

[Duckdog]

I have done this since I started with la Machine two weeks ago. Not something that I am happy with myself over.