Hi All. New to CPAP, and having a few issues.

Hi everyone. I am new to CPAP, and wanting to get through my initial getting used to it period, and looking forward to the health benefits of being on the hose, but I am dealing with some initial discomfort issues, and want to get some suggestions from you veterans..

The main issue i am having isn't about mask comfort or feeling clautrophobic. I am not seeming to have any issues with that aspect at all. The issue I am facing is more possibly some needed pressure adjustments or machine adjustments more than anything, and not sure what to tell my RT to do.

The issue I am facing is that the mask makes me feel like i am rebreathing stale air repeatedly. I have always been really sensitive to re breathing exhaled air. when i breath in, unless i take really small shallow breaths feel like i am getting a fair bit of my last breath back in, like the mask is not venting well enough to expell my last breath. on the mask i have, there are two vents. the first one is on the elbow at the top of the mask where the hose connects, and the second is right in front of my nose. there seems to be a pretty slow volume of air passing through them, and since I take pretty deep breaths, and my machine having cflex slows down considerably on exhale, that volume actually decreases on exhale.

the first night, i used it as the RT set it up. i was able to tolerate the mask for about 3 hours before i was to the point of frustration adn took it off.

I turned my cflex down to lowest allowable setting, and was able to tolerate the mask for a little over 4 hours last night before i had to remove it.

The first night my AHI was 5.4, my second night my AHI was a little lower at 5.1. so i did see some improvement there, but it is still not much better than my pre CPAP AHI of 6.5. All things considered there is only marginal improvement with the CPAP. during my sleep study, they had me to an AHI of 1.0 and i had felt great after the night sleep i got then, and i tolerated the mask for the full night without a sleeping pill.

The only difference is that i am using a slightly different mask, and wanted to get everyone's thoughts on how to improve the feeling of getting stale air. my pressures are actually pretty low, they have me prescribed at 6-10 cm. and after turning off the ramp, it was better, but still felt as though the mask was venting slowly, would it be good to see if the RT can adjust the starting pressure up a little, instead of the system starting at 6, perhaps starting at 7 or 8 since higher pressure may allow the vent to do more to clear my exhales before my next breath?

Go here and request the provider manual for your machine and in that manual you will find the instructions for changing that minimum from 6 to 7 (which I think will help resolve your breathing issues).
http://www.apneaboard.com/adjust-cpap-p ... tup-manual
Do this while awake without being under the gun to fall asleep.

Don't worry about the AHI right how as it probably is including some awake breathing events getting flagged because the machine doesn't know if you are awake or asleep. Often our awake breathing is more irregular and the machine will flag normal irregularities as some sort of apnea.

What are your humidity settings? It could be the warmer air is giving you the sense of rebreathing air. The vent rate of most masks is multiple times higher than your tidal volume, and it is very unlikely you are getting any significant volume of re-breathed air, however if it is warm and moist, it might seem like you are. Maybe try a lower humidity/heat setting.

my humidifier is set at 2, (my machine has 0-5 range.) I keep my house relatively cool at around 70. I was just curious on this since i have relatively low pressure settings, and the mask i used during my sleep study had a higher vent rate than the mask i have now. I have as requested above raised my lower pressure from 6 to 7.5 to see if that helps, and while awake it seems to have made a significant difference in how i feel.

I have had apnea most of my life, and can definitely tell the difference on and off the machine. I am for the first day in months without a headache on waking, so i am seeing some results already. I just want to get this machine dialed in as soon as possible since I finally have it. it took 2 weeks after my sleep study for my DME to get me my machine. I am really hoping to make this work for a good night sleep for a change since it has been so long without good sleep. I am beyond sick and tired of chronic fatigue, memory issues, headaches, and just in general feeling crumby.