not sleeping well

[BigBear]

hello all,
over the last nights i haven't been getting much sleep with the mask, i tend to toss and turn franticlly through the night and end up taking it off various times through out the night, i feel drained, in the day i'm knackerd, feel like collapsing and falling sleep everywhere. my missus, isn't getting much sleep either because of my unability to get to sleep and tossing and turning. i really do feel like getting some sleeping pills and using them to go sleep. without the mask i go sleep ok, but feel worse overall in the mornings. any ideas on how to combat this?

[Julie]

Hi - have you been following what's happening on your computer? Do you have the software, card reader, etc.? It would definitely help to be able to know what the machine says about leaks, numbers and more. You haven't given a lot of information either about your environment, whether you've been going to bed at the same time every night, or if the room temperature's too warm (not as effective as cool, within reason), or what you've been eating before bed. If you're having GERD overnight, it could make a big difference and you might want to look at cutting out coffee, etc. Exercising right before bed is also not a good idea. More information would help us to help you.

[BigBear]

normally, i go bed at around midnight, due to the fact of getting in from work at 11pm having walked an hour from work, sometimes i do cycle depending on weather, getting cleaned up, sometimes i have dinner, sometimes not,last few nights i've not had dinner as i eaten before work that evening, don't tend to drink coffee that late, normally milk. night time temps are the same as normal, heating off, so it can be rather cold some nights but generally cool.
I downloaded and installed the software, have uploaded the first batch of files last week, i don't get very many leaks, normally slight ones when i sleep on my side but generally not major, my ahi has risen over the last 5 day from 1.1 to 2.0 has gone above once. i have moved the pipe to the headboard to allow me to turn easier at night

[robysue]

BigBear,

I bid you a sad welcome to my Insomnia and CPAP club (as it's honorary president). And I hope your time in the club is very, very short.

For what it is worth, here is my advice on getting out of the club as quickly as possible:

1) Don't assume the insomnia will just go away on its own. If you ignore it, it may get worse instead of better. And if it gets worse, it may be the start of a very nasty self-reinforcing cycle.

2) Contact the sleep doctor's office NOW to report your current problems with sleeping. From your first post it sounds like you've got problems with both getting to sleep with the mask and staying asleep once you've gotten to sleep with the mask. Be sure to make it clear that both things are problems. Also make it clear that when you take the mask off, you get and stay asleep just fine---in the sense of how you sleep with the untreated apnea. And also make it clear to the sleep doctor's office that you are feeling WORSE in the morning now that you are using CPAP than you were feeling before you started using CPAP. Hence the insomnia (if left unaddressed) is likely to cause problems with you being able to become compliant with therapy. [And CPAP therapy is not particularly effective in the long run if you are only doing it now and again.]

3) Sleep meds? That's something to discuss with your sleep doctor. It's a choice that the two of you will both need to be comfortable with. They can be very useful for some people. If they are appropriate for you, make sure you discuss with the prescribing doctor what the long term strategy is: How long does the doc expect you to be taking the meds? And how does the doc expect to wean you off the meds if the meds are only a short term strategy? You don't want to get a case of rebound insomnia several weeks or months down the line---that simply delays the battle of learning how to sleep with the mask.

4) Regardless of the decision about sleep meds, you need to work HARD on establishing good sleep hygiene. A pretty standard list of good sleep hygiene rules/tips can be found at http://www.sleepeducation.com/Hygiene.aspx . In my case, the most important of the rules seem to be:

• * Use the bed and bedroom for ONLY sleep and sex
  * Maintain a rigid WAKE UP TIME seven days a week and a rather rigid BED TIME seven days a week
  * Go to bed only when sleepy (that means DELAYING bedtime if I'm not sleepy at my rigid BED TIME)
  * Get out of bed if I've been lying in bed for 20--30 minutes without being able to fall asleep and go into a different room to do something quiet and relaxing until getting sleepy enough to try again

5) You should also try to have as much of the CPAP-preparation stuff done well in advance of bedtime as possible. When I was first starting out, the very process of putting the equipment together and washing my face was waking me up every single night right at bedtime. Simply putting the mask, hose, and humidifier together and washing my face at suppertime (rather than bedtime) helped that problem. Once my mind started to associate CPAP = SLEEP, I was able to start moving some of the CPAP-stuff closer to bedtime, but I still have to be careful about getting most of it done before it's too close to bedtime. Of course, with your shift work schedule, this may be tough---unless you can do all the CPAP prep (except face washing) before you leave for work.

Best of luck,
robysue

[BigBear]

ty for that, ive contatced my sleep centre, i can only attend on drop in sessions on mon/fri afternoons, so i'm going in fri. i'm also adressing the hose managment issue, buy moving the hose to hang over head and not to the side. i will try using the setup before i go work and address it that way. i do understand that it takes some getting used to and i hope i can sort this problem out.

ps even if my time is short, which to some degree i think it won't i'll still be around lol. ty again robysue

[DocWeezy]

Hi BigBear....how long have you been on the hose now?

Robysue is right about establishing good sleep hygiene NOW, and in addition to that, it can help to understand that it takes a while for your body to adjust to sleeping with the hardware. The first few weeks can be miserable, and some of us have used sleep meds to help us overcome some of the newness problems and get some sleep during the adjustment period. I was reluctant to "give in" to them, but my sleep doc gave me a prescription anyway and convinced me to try. It really helped the adjustment period and I got off them as soon as I felt I could sleep a bit.

I don't think I slept even reasonably well for the first month, and only moderately well the second month. And that was with drugs! It's an adjustment issue...some people adjust within a night, some of us take months. I'm now just over three months and starting to feel like I'm sleeping more normally now, and that has just happened in the past week (I haven't had any sleep drugs for over a month now).

Hang in there! It does get easier and it definitely get better with time.

Weezy

[BigBear]

ive been "on the hose" 4/5 weeks now, but ive only just realsied, having a dry mouth...is this an issues that needs sorting out asap? whats the cause or remedy