more newbie questions

Gave this thread a more generic title so I can ask different kinds of questions as they come up.

Backstory: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome causes pain syndromes including hands and face. Pardon telegraphic sentences. Hand pain flare-up. After many masks, settled on Bleep. Only one that does not put pressure on my face (pressure=nerve pain flares). Using hose management that keeps bleep off of face because even resting on face was tender.

Have SD card and waiting for son to help with OSCAR, technology.

Last night longest time on machines. Settings: Auto ramp. Range 4-20. Auto. Screen says

4.5 hours
pressure 7.4
leaks 0
AHI 5.7
total AI 4.8
central 4.6
obstructive 0.2

Not asleep the entire time. Listened to audiobook. Woke several times.

Sleep study showed no centrals. Are centrals a concern?

Is only ramp to 7 normal? Feels weak.

I wear a chinstrap because weak jaw joint. Cautious about tightening it because of jaw pain. Hope my mouth was shut. Would mouth breathing show as a leak?

Tooth pain in the night caused me to take mask off. Per dentist, pain not originating in tooth. From nerves in jaw and gums. It's an Ehlers-Danlos thing which is genetic and no fix.

Tried dreamports but hand pain made it impossible to attach. Now using eclipse. Noticed significant difference. Eclipse connection points are pointed inward, almost touch each other in the center under nose. Dreamports are more straight frontward. Nares are pointed forward/outward, not inward. Eclipse pulls nares very hard. Ugh, wondering why eclipse is shaped like that. Very uncomfortable. However, super easy to attach.

Trying to figure out, is chinstrap too tight or is pulling on nares causing nerve pain in gums/teeth. Thinking how to fix angle of eclipse.

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:08 am

Not asleep the entire time. Listened to audiobook. Woke several times.

Sleep study showed no centrals. Are centrals a concern

Not a concern at all as long as they were flagged during the time you weren't sound asleep.

Anything flagged while awake we ignore them except to realize that we aren't sleeping so great or enough.
Centrals flagged while asleep are a symptom of poor sleep but not necessarily the cause of the poor sleep.

Thanks. Had a thought. Nerve pain flares take awhile to settle down. Sometimes days. Maybe should not try mask again until I have OSCAR working? Not sure I know what OSCAR does, actually.

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:08 am

Would mouth breathing show as a leak?

Yes...it will show as a leak.
But as to how important it might be will depend on just how much you are mouth breathing.
Not all mouth breathing equals massive leaks to the point of negatively impacting a person's therapy.

Some time ago I woke up and I was mouth breathing (very gently)...for sure I was mouth breathing so I decided to continue mouth breathing just so I could see the impact on the leak line.
Below is the result of the experiment. I continued to mouth breath for about 15 minutes and finally aborted the experiment out of boredom.
I circled the known mouth breathing time at the end of the night.
Obviously the amount of leak was insignificant and not enough to impact therapy.
Note...I have no idea what caused the bigger leaks prior to the wake up...I slept right through them so I don't care.
I don't remember what mask I was using at the time.....either the P10 or the Bleep DreamPort though.

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:38 am

Maybe should not try mask again until I have OSCAR working? Not sure I know what OSCAR does, actually.

OSCAR just shows you in more detail what was actually going on with your breathing or not breathing during the night.
The machine just measures air flow....it does NOT measure sleep status.
Until you can actually sleep for prolonged periods of time while using the mask/machine the information you get by using OSCAR really doesn't mean much because awake flagged stuff doesn't mean much.

It's called sleep apnea for a reason....you must be asleep. It isn't called awake apnea.

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:08 am

Tried dreamports but hand pain made it impossible to attach. Now using eclipse. Noticed significant difference. Eclipse connection points are pointed inward, almost touch each other in the center under nose. Dreamports are more straight frontward. Nares are pointed forward/outward, not inward. Eclipse pulls nares very hard. Ugh, wondering why eclipse is shaped like that. Very uncomfortable. However, super easy to attach.

Trying to figure out, is chinstrap too tight or is pulling on nares causing nerve pain in gums/teeth. Thinking how to fix angle of eclipse.

You are going to have to accept the fact that you are an outlier and your problems are unique to you and most people using any mask aren't going to be having the same problems. There isn't any mask out there that doesn't create some sort of problem for someone in some fashion. That's why we have so many masks out there.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:48 am

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:08 am

Tried dreamports but hand pain made it impossible to attach. Now using eclipse. Noticed significant difference. Eclipse connection points are pointed inward, almost touch each other in the center under nose. Dreamports are more straight frontward. Nares are pointed forward/outward, not inward. Eclipse pulls nares very hard. Ugh, wondering why eclipse is shaped like that. Very uncomfortable. However, super easy to attach.

Trying to figure out, is chinstrap too tight or is pulling on nares causing nerve pain in gums/teeth. Thinking how to fix angle of eclipse.

You are going to have to accept the fact that you are an outlier and your problems are unique to you and most people using any mask aren't going to be having the same problems.

You've got that right! I just joined an app by a PT for people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, the Zebra Club. Name comes from medical students taught about diagnosing illnesses, "If you hear hoofbeats, it's not a zebra. It's a horse. Don't look for zebras." Thats why it took me 50 years of illnesses, injuries, iatrogenic harm to get a diagnosis.

Figured out how to jerry-rig the eclipse. Put a bit of foam (like the kind in rigid pipe insulation) between the connectors to hold them apart. If anyone can see reason why not to, please tell!

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 8:10 am

Figured out how to jerry-rig the eclipse. Put a bit of foam (like the kind in rigid pipe insulation) between the connectors to hold them apart. If anyone can see reason why not to, please tell!

I can't think of any reason where using the foam would create a problem with the mask.

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:44 am

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:38 am

Maybe should not try mask again until I have OSCAR working? Not sure I know what OSCAR does, actually.

OSCAR just shows you in more detail what was actually going on with your breathing or not breathing during the night.
The machine just measures air flow....it does NOT measure sleep status.
Until you can actually sleep for prolonged periods of time while using the mask/machine the information you get by using OSCAR really doesn't mean much because awake flagged stuff doesn't mean much.

It's called sleep apnea for a reason....you must be asleep. It isn't called awake apnea.

So, if I had one obstructive apnea event, I must have been actually asleep! Or is the machine not really that smart, and I need OSCAR to know that?

If I had more events, would the machine ramp up more? Seven seems like not much pressure to do anything.

onward60 wrote: ↑

Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:38 am

So, if I had one obstructive apnea event, I must have been actually asleep! Or is the machine not really that smart, and I need OSCAR to know that?

No, the machine is not that smart. It can misinterpret breathing patterns - and register breathing pauses incorrectly. OSCAR is our tool for viewing our breathing patterns, and figuring out what it was the machine was responding to.

If I had more events, would the machine ramp up more? Seven seems like not much pressure to do anything.

The machines raise pressure in response to:
Snores
Flow limitations
Hypopneas
Obstructive apneas.
Any of these events would cause the pressure to go higher - automatic machines have an algorithm that defines when a breathing pattern gets interpreted as a reason for raising the pressure, and how to raise it.

https://www.resmed.com.au/healthcare-pr ... technology

I'm getting there, but I bought the wrong sd reader. I think I have successfully downloaded OSCAR, though.