Questions to Ask My Doctor

I resisted for a year because I had a lot of false impressions about CPAP. When my CPAP therapy began in May 2015, I was given almost no instruction/explanation, no mask fitting.

Before even knowing about SleepyHead, I somehow discovered MySleepMapper.com. Last fall I started recording my SleepMapper numbers into a spreadsheet. My AHI ranged from about 1 to 11. Central & obstructive apneas and hypopneas ranged from 0 to 60. My Mask Fit was almost always 100% (Leaks = 0%).

I had read somewhere that "high" was good for Mask Fit (but rarely 100%) and "low" was good for AHI, etc. Since my numbers seemed out of kilter, I scheduled a doctor's appointment to get some explanations & to see if adjustments might be advisable. My next scheduled appointment was 6 months away. She sort of seemed to me to be offended that I asked follow up questions and wanted more than "standard MD BS".

I have another appointment scheduled in a couple of weeks & want to be prepared.

What questions should I ask my doctor? Heck, I don't feel that I know enough to ask the right questions here.

From what you've just told us

"She sort of seemed to me to be offended that I asked follow up questions and wanted more than "standard MD BS".

you need to change your doctor!

Robear wrote:What questions should I ask my doctor? Heck, I don't feel that I know enough to ask the right questions here.

I can't help with questions to ask your doctor, because I don't know what you want to know.

the lower your leaks are, the better, at least keep them out of large leak territory. the lower the AHI the better, though once you get below 2, there's not a lot of difference for most people.

I see that your pressure was raised from 8 to 11 on feb2, that caused your events to drop considerably, but also is when you started having your mask leak problems,

I think it would be interesting to see how you did in auto mode, with pressures from 10-12 to start with. the slightly lower pressure would help with the mask fitting, and the machine could still respond to intermittent needs throughout the night.

Robear wrote:Since my numbers seemed out of kilter, I scheduled a doctor's appointment to get some explanations & to see if adjustments might be advisable. My next scheduled appointment was 6 months away. She sort of seemed to me to be offended that I asked follow up questions and wanted more than "standard MD BS".

You may need a new doctor. But let's assume for now that you just caught the doc on a bad day.

I have another appointment scheduled in a couple of weeks & want to be prepared.

What questions should I ask my doctor? Heck, I don't feel that I know enough to ask the right questions here.

What to ask depends on what kind of information you need to get from the doc.

I would recommend that you either drop off a SH report or request that the doc's office run a report on your data before your appointment with a note to the doc that you want to talk about the data from your machine.

If you are still not feeling as well as you'd like, good questions to ask are:

• What do you consider effective CPAP therapy? And do you believe my CPAP therapy is effective? Why?
• Are my leaks sufficiently under control? If not, what would you recommend that I do to minimize them?
• If you are still feeling pretty lousy, you need to point that out to the doc: I'm still dealing with a lot of excessive daytime sleepiness (or whatever other OSA symptoms you had before your diagnosis). I am aware that it can take time to start feeling better, but in general how long does it take for your patients to start feeling better? What should I do if I'm still feeling lousy after another couple of months of using the CPAP?
• If you are having trouble using the machine---as in you can't get to sleep, you wake up a lot during the night, you're dealing with aerophagia, you're pulling the mask off in your sleep, etc: Discuss the problem.
• Ask whether there is any local patient support group for OSA. Patient education about OSA is hard to come by, but if no-one ever asks for it, the sleep medicine community has no incentive to develop such programs.