Looking for help out there.

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
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NightHawkeye
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Location: Iowa - The Hawkeye State

Post by NightHawkeye » Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:20 am

MeHoo wrote:was gonna upload my PDF for any other opinions, but cant seem to find any attach features here.
Yeah, there aren't any. Instead, ya gotta upload your pics to a third-party site, perhaps your own internet provider's personal web pages, and then link to them. Then you can use the Img button here to show the link as a picture. It's not too bad when you get used to it.

Regards,
Bill

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sharon1965
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Location: Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Post by sharon1965 » Wed Mar 14, 2007 7:38 am

mehoo,

your symptoms sound just like periodic limb movement disorder to my admittedly untrained ear...my sleep doc only addressed the apneas after my first sleep study and still didn't mention plmd as a problem after my titration....it wasn't until i went for my first check up and told him that while some things had improved (ie. heartburn was completely gone) i still felt crappy and tired...he said 'well, you do have pretty frequent and severe periodic limb movements, and that will definitely contribute to extreme tiredness'; then he sent me for bloodwork which showed extremely low ferritin level (ferritin is a protein that helps to absorb iron...low ferritin, low iron often cause plmd) and now wants me on iron supps and requip (meds for restless leg and plmd)--doesn't mean i'm going to go that route, as i'm a medication-phobe, just a thought...read back on kteague's posts on plmd and see what you think...if your apneas are under control and you think you're getting a good night's sleep, it could be a secondary sleep disorder causing the problems now
good luck
sharon1965

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Post by Guest » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:10 pm

hades161 wrote:I can relate to the gall bladder thing I had a stone get caught in the duct to the liver and I was in huge pain and had to have the stone and the gall bladder removed. I fought the acid reflux for ages but I feel looking back that my OSA might have been at fault. In your case I think removal of the gall bladder should be explored mainly due to the side effects I had when mine was bad. I felt so tired all the time and ill, finally the reflux herniated the flap that closes off my stomach. I feel the OSA, GERD, and that bad gall bladder really stuck it to me. Once I had it out I did feel better and had more energy as I was not so ill all the time.

The extra factors of gall bladder disease, your caffeine intake, and possible leg disorder might be interfering with your OSA treatment. There also is the possibility of your pressure not being set right and your getting little to no REM sleep. Seeing you have the cash to explore the issues you have, I would head to the Doc and lay it all out to them. Maybe get a new sleep study to confirm your pressure needs. Until you nail down all the factors in your life and your health, you might very well be treating your OSA perfectly but have other factors negating the treatment.

By all means though check with the people here on your numbers and I am sure you'll get enough info on what they mean.
wow.

i was always under the impression [always as in: since i found out] that if the gall bladder doesnt give you attacks, and its already not doing its job, what good was taking it out then? then it would be GONE and not doing its job. ya know? i never thought that it could cause problems other than pain. my doc did tell me though that if its not working its literally dead tissue sitting inside of you though.. my reluctance for the surgery comes from my ZERO progress with knee surgery. i guess i should look back into it.

Took me 35 minutes to wake up and keep my eyes open this morning. i would open and then my eyes would roll back and i'd blink and they'd roll back. this is hell. its just getting worse every day and im struggling so much.

i will check back with my doc about this. thanks for the help.

oh.. and i didnt mean to sound like an arrogant punk when i said i made alot of money.. i realize how that sounds. just fortunate to be noticed in the field and im very proud of that. did not mean to sound bad. but yes i can explore more options.

Am i the only one who thinks the sleep study place is nearly useless? so many electrodes you cant sleep anyways, laying on your back, your "neighbor" snoring their heads off, room too warm, etc etc. i had alot of problems with the situation of my study and i'm told its one of the nicer setups. no hospital, but instead a hotel-room appearance with tv, etc. just didnt think it was an accurate measure i guess.

i will try and make images of my pdf. thanks again.

oh i should add on top of lowering the blood pressure the cpap has almost entirely removed headaches.. i once had a 6 month, 3 week, 4 day migraine that the cpap/blood pressure meds seemed to have fixed. so i dont think its useless just not what i expected.

l8r


MeHoo
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Post by MeHoo » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:12 pm

cant figure out how to delete posts...
Last edited by MeHoo on Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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hades161
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Post by hades161 » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:27 am

I am not 100% up on what effect having a dead organ like the gall bladder has on your health but to my mind just the idea of "dead organ" in my body, kinda is scarey. I am not a doctor or in the medical field I main suggested it out of being complete in looking into your health issues and factors that "might" effect your body and OSA treatment. You might not need it out at all. Just in my case it was causing me allot of issues so I thought it merited some more exploration.

As far as the punk thing ya sounded ok to me and I was glad that you have the means to explore your medical options. So many things can effect your results in treating your OSA, I felt compelled to encourage you to seek out more professional help to reduce those factors.

Good luck to ya and by all means join us sometime in chat here and talk to us. We seem to have a few more Sleep Techs stopping by lately and they might have more info for you.

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Mask: Swift™ FX Nasal Pillow CPAP Mask with Headgear
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hades161
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Post by hades161 » Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:56 am

I looked more into the Gall Bladder thing and I have no support on the idea that it might be the organ messing with your treatment. Only my personal experience with that pesky organ. I found very little on a dead gall bladder with no pain. Here is a link to a medical journal.

http://www.romecriteria.org/documents/GUTII/ibs998.pdf

It covers the gall bladder disorders in depth and talks about many things that can happen. The closest I came to what you talked about was a blockage due to a very small gallstones or sludge, to small to pick up under normal scans but found after removal, that can cause problems all the way up to getting gangrene in the organ. But from what you say there is no pain, almost in all the articles I have looked at pain at one time or another was there. So all I can say really is explore it and your symptoms with your doc and online to see if it relates to you. If nothing else than to just discount it as a factor. My personal opinion is if its dead or just not functioning and its blocking input/output to the ducts to the liver and intestines, all it can do in there is rot, get infected, or mess up the pluming and I would want it out.

Best wishes.

_________________
Mask: Swift™ FX Nasal Pillow CPAP Mask with Headgear
Humidifier: S9™ Series H5i™ Heated Humidifier with Climate Control
Additional Comments: I swap out the Swift FX as needed with the Mirage Quatro Full Face with Headgear.
Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Sir Winston Churchill

I’m not asleep… but that doesn’t mean I’m awake.
- Albert Camus

MeHoo
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Post by MeHoo » Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:03 am

my g/f told me this morning that i make weird noises and she thinks i might breathe out of my mouth.. i showed her how it sounds when the air rushes out of my mouth and she said it wasnt exactly like that but it isnt the normal breathing sound either.

gonna look into that too. having a dry mouth doesnt seem to me like a good tell tale sign since i breathe through my nose all the time and its not as dry as a desert. i may try the tape just to see. not like it could hurt to try.

MeHoo
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Post by MeHoo » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:38 am

ugh talk about annoying.. i just found out i had a comptuer virus, my ISP killed my account because it was hacking their servers without my knowledge, my debit card has been shut off and someone is stealing my identity. yay.

=[ never gonna get any sleep now.

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RichCMH
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Post by RichCMH » Thu Mar 15, 2007 11:58 am

Get a MAC! As a digital designer you should have one anyway right?? With CS3 on it's way it's going to be a slice of heaven.

BTW - a weird sound was either a leak or you were mouth breathing. Either one is bad!

MeHoo
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Post by MeHoo » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:25 pm

she said it wasnt a leak it has a gurgly sound with it.. i bet it was me snoring and breathing through my mouth at the same time.

on the mac subject.. macs are subject to the exact same viruses as pc's, it was clearly my fault. i went to a bad website using internet explorer instead of opera and my virus definitions were 3 weeks outdated. oops.

and im a CGI designer/modeler. anything 3d is useless on a mac. if i used photoshop i would prolly have one, but thats the only software that runs better on a mac. heck i have their 30" monitor at home hooked up to my alienware.

but thats neither here nor there.

i am going to be taping my mouth shut but i have some facial hair i do not care to lose.. any tips?

cflame1
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Post by cflame1 » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:10 pm

try doing a search on poligrip strips

MeHoo
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Post by MeHoo » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:50 pm

oh well here we go.. testing

Image

click the extremely annoyingly thin thumbnail to see my whole sleep report for the last few days or so.

anyone with any advice is welcome to help =]

i am gonna try the polident thing on my lips. thought that thread about getting the tongue piercing and lip piercing and rubber banding them together was interresting too lol. dont think that would keep my mouth shut though =[

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RichCMH
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Post by RichCMH » Thu Mar 15, 2007 5:15 pm

<<insert *beating a dead horse* icon here>>

Me: 8 years, 6 Macs, 0 viruses!

You: 3 weeks without an anti-v update.

I love that Vista has been hacked to pieces already...my fav is overriding the 30-day trial period and never having to activate it. As Microsoft says, Wow!

Anyway, best of luck to ya, really! I'm sure someone will give you more good advice after reading your charts.

-Cheers

MeHoo
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Post by MeHoo » Fri Mar 16, 2007 10:17 am

well i've been using pc's since they were available... NO idea how long thats been.. well over 6 computers all self built [say that for a mac] except this last one.

many years of "unapproved" browsing and downloading and i've had a total of 3 viruses that i didnt block outright. every time it was my own fault. well its always my fault since i browse and download in the "unapproved" areas of the web.

I'm no microsoft fanboy but i know from personal experience that Mac's are just as likely to get viruses [seeing a whole lab full of them toasted at the art college was funny enough]. they all get it. to think that your OS is magically blocking things even if you dont connect it to the internet to update for a month, is just being naive =]

The virus i got recently hasn't hit symantec's radar yet so its within its first week of life so to speak. if you think you're not vulnerable to something the largest anti-virus software company isnt even aware of yet.. well.. back to naive. =]

i'd never get a virus ever again if i just browsed the "safe zones" on the web and played minesweeper all day. Little too boring IMO.

I actually found out that the virus did not do what i thought it did. It seems my internet account was locked down because i exceeded the bandwidth limits for the month - a limit of 250 gigs of traffic. They blamed the virus spamming emails, but it very well could have been a fun month of Bittorrents on my end that caused it =]. The credit card thing is a separate issue from an online retailer who's credit card processing center decided to write down my numbers instead of processing them. They have been cited for this before. In the end, all my little bug did was make my internet explorer act up.

I kinda figured they were related.. weird coincidence huh?

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RichCMH
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Post by RichCMH » Fri Mar 16, 2007 12:26 pm

You've been using pc's as long as I have then. An Atari 800XL- that was my first in 1984.

Considering that my best friend, a Mac genius at an Apple store, has yet to see a Mac with a virus, and discussions on the topic on apple.com both make a strong counterpoint. The trojan/worm/virus OSX.Leap.A last year did very little if no damage at all. I know that a virus can be spread worldwide in about 45 minutes, thus using any kind of anti-v is a complete waste until the threat is managed.

Bricked Macs in college were probably the victim of some sort of abuse or more likely just a corrupt kernal.

Call me boring, but not naive. Exploring and downloading in "unapproved" areas is naive.