Survived my first night on a CPAP

OneRad1 · Post by **OneRad1** » Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:11 am

I used a CPAP for the first time last night. It was an AirSense 11 with a F30i mouth/nose mask. I did like how it connects at the top of my head so I could easily roll side to side. I feel like it took me a long time to go to sleep and that I did wake up quite a few times. It was autoset from the doctor, I believe they said 5-20 pressure. I did have a really dry mouth which is normal at night for me. The humidity was set at 5, I tried moving it to 7 in the middle of the night but woke up with water in my mask etc so moved it back to 5.
Here is the MyAir data:

Usage 7:19
Good Mask Seal 20/20
12.3 Events per hour
3 Mask on/off
Total Score 97

It seems pretty decent for my first night, any thoughts?

Here were highlights of my home sleep study:
Evaluation Period was 7 hours and 03 minutes.

Total AHI:(calculated using Evaluation Period Time) 73.5

Lowest SpO2: 64

Time spent with SpO2 <88%: 0:05 minutes

Interpretation: Severe obstructive sleep apnea with an apnea hypopnea index of 73. He had 316 apneas, about 240 were central but also had 203 hypopneas. His low O2 saturation was 85%

ChicagoGranny · Post by **ChicagoGranny** » Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:31 am

It's a good start, but you can do much better over time if you use OSCAR to help manage your CPAP therapy.

Your machine settings (5 - 20) are probably not optimal. OSCAR can help find the optimal settings.

Rainout in the mask can be corrected if it continues. A newbie mistake is to make the humidifier setting too high. The objective is to prevent nasal dryness. Too much humidity can be as bad (causes congestion) as too little. Some, like me, don't use the humidifier. For others, it's a must-have.

Dry mouth is concerning. Optimal machine pressure settings might alleviate this.

Please stick to this one thread while you are optimizing your therapy.

Welcome!

Dog Slobber · Post by **Dog Slobber** » Sat Oct 30, 2021 9:38 am

Given your original diagnosis attributed more than half of your Apneas as Central in nature, and your treated AHI doesn't differentiate between Central and Obstructive, there's a lot of missing information.

One's first night can also be misleading, a lot of us, when new to CPAP lie there half the night breathing somewhat erratically. Erratic breathing, while awake can trigger a lot of false positives.

Using OSCAR a lot of the missing informational gaps can be filled in.

scf · Post by **scf** » Sat Oct 30, 2021 11:15 am

GOOD FOR YOU. You are off to a good start with a positive attitude.

I had to laugh because I could have posted this myself, the same mask, the same pressure, the BATH I got when I put the humidity too high, the dry mouth. STICK WITH THE GURU'S ON HERE and you will conquer this thing. Until I got my pressures tweaked better, I found that BIOTENE dry mouth spray works great. You can find it in many drug stores, groceries in the pharmacy departments, WalMart, etc. I sprayed it in my mouth when I went to bed and then once when I got up for a bathroom break. Works wonders. Do keep us informed about your journey and do not give up!!

BTW, I love the F30i mask and after I bought a buckwheat pillow I can sleep on my side with no leak problem.

Miss Emerita · Post by **Miss Emerita** » Sat Oct 30, 2021 11:25 am

Congratulations on starting PAP therapy for your sleep apnea. It's common to wake up a lot at the beginning, as you adapt to the new experience. You can speed up the adaptation by using the machine during the day or evening outside your bedroom, while you watch TV or read.

Like DS, I'm not sure why your were diagnosed with obstructive apnea when such a high proportion of your apnea events were central (i.e., did not involve obstruction.) But there may be a good reason. Any chance you could scan and post your sleep report? If you do this, please blank out identifying information first.

You'll see a link to the Oscar software in my signature area below. If you have a laptop or desktop computer, an SD card in your machine, and a way to read the SD card, you can easily generate detailed "daily reports" on your sleep. By posting those, the people on the forum will be able to offer informed advice about whether and how to adjust your settings. We can also advise you about questions you might want to take back to your sleep doctor.

The reduction in your AHI is encouraging. Your sleep doctor will want to see your AHI below 5, and here we regard an AHI of 1 or less as excellent and an AHI of 1 to 2 as good. You will get there!

CyberSpiff · Post by **CyberSpiff** » Sun Oct 31, 2021 8:33 am

Like scf I could have written the same thing 8 months ago. After reading MANY posts from very smart people I have managed to adjust my settings to keep AHI well under control and sleep much better than I have in years. There are still some nights where things go tosh, but I come right back here to search for posts that may help, or ask questions.

The folks here are the bee’s knees. I cannot imagine what the past 8 months would have been like without their help. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice, but be prepared with the right information to help them help you.

If you can download OSCAR and put an SD card in your machine. You can then post images showing how things went for those who are knowledgeable to offer advice. Have a gander at the info on this forum to learn more. The wiki is a good place to start.

https://www.cpaptalk.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

OneRad1 · Post by **OneRad1** » Sun Oct 31, 2021 8:55 am

Hi,
Here is night 2. I seemed to sleep more than night 1 but this is going to take a while to get used to.

Miss Emerita · Post by **Miss Emerita** » Sun Oct 31, 2021 1:29 pm

Good job getting going with Oscar! I'm glad to see that your CA index is way down from what it was during your sleep test.

Central apneas are cessations of breathing of 10 seconds or more without any accompanying obstruction. They are pretty common during our awake periods. We often pause between breaths or hold our breath when we are concentrating or exerting, for example. And if we've done some heavier breathing, we may be less inclined to take the next breath within 10 seconds. (What happens is that the heavier breathing washes out some CO2, and CO2 is the trigger that tells our brains we need to take a breath.)

So one big question with CAs during the night is whether they're occurring while you're asleep, or whether you're fully or partly awake. (Some people call that sleep-wake junk, or SWJ.) If you weren't really asleep, the CA isn't a SLEEP apnea event. Of course, if you're having a lot of SWJ, you're probably not sleeping very soundly, so even if the CAs aren't a problem on their own, the SWJ is.

You can zoom to look at your flow rate and see what's going on with those CAs. I just select a bit of the graph and then hit the up arrow on my laptop until I get to a view of around 5 minutes. Here's an example of a CA following arousal breathing:

CA after arousal.png

Notice that the arousal breathing is deeper (goes higher and lower in relation to the zero line) and more irregular than asleep breathing.

When you have a chance, you might take a look to see whether you see something similar. Feel free to post a zoomed view or two.

OneRad1 · Post by **OneRad1** » Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:01 pm

Hi,

I decided to try a few more nights to get more used to things. Here are a few Oscar screen shots. It seemed like a pretty good night.

scf · Post by **scf** » Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:07 pm

Your first nights look 100% better than mine did. I would say you are off to a great start

OneRad1 · Post by **OneRad1** » Fri Nov 05, 2021 1:03 pm

scf wrote: ↑
Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:07 pm
Your first nights look 100% better than mine did. I would say you are off to a great start

Thank You, it definitely takes some getting used to. My doctor said to follow up in 2 months so I am winging it for now.....

scf · Post by **scf** » Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:37 pm

OneRad1 wrote: ↑
Fri Nov 05, 2021 1:03 pm

scf wrote: ↑
Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:07 pm
Your first nights look 100% better than mine did. I would say you are off to a great start
Thank You, it definitely takes some getting used to. My doctor said to follow up in 2 months so I am winging it for now.....

I started on 9/14 and this morning I pulled the mask off and planned to get another hour’s sleep. After about 2 mins I realized I wanted the mask back on.

so I guess I have turned the corner. You sound like you will get there much faster!

Miss Emerita · Post by **Miss Emerita** » Fri Nov 05, 2021 5:02 pm

OneRad1, the zoomed in views of those couple of centrals do indeed show arousals before CAs and Hs. Could you give us the same kind of view of a couple of spots in the CA-dense times after 7 and after 8 am?

Survived my first night on a CPAP

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