hello

Hi everyone! I'm new here. Just got diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea a week ago. My sleep study showed that my ahi is 92 and my oxygen level got as low as 80%. My pressure is set at 15. I just received my resmed s8 elite II cpap machine with humidifier last Friday. They gave me the nasal pillows to use with it. This is how my nights have gone with the machine so far.

Fri- slept with the machine great all through the night.
Sat- slept with the machine on but kept waking up every hour with my mouth open
Sun- slept good with the machine
Mon- slept with machine but kept waking up with mouth open
Tues- slept terrible with machine had terrible anxiety, kept waking up

I notice that the nights I slept good I was able to keep my mouth closed and the nights I didn't sleep well my mouth kept opening. Do you have any suggestions to how to keep my mouth closed through the night? Should I call my doctor about this? I really want my cpap experience to be a good one. I'm concerned for my health and want to do all I can to improve it.

Welcome to the forum. You'll find a lot of information here.

In answer to your question regarding your mouth opening or leaking, you may need a chin strap or you may want to try mouth taping. Enter either of those terms in the forum search box and you'll come up with many posts with information regarding both.

Also, click on the yellow light bulb (Our Wisdom) above in the forum banner and you'll probably find most of the answers to every question you can think of, besides learning a lot.

And let us know more about you by filling in your user equipment statistics. It will appear with every post you make and will enable others to help you easier if we know what equipment you are using. It'll also save you the trouble of having to type it in all the time. Use the words, not the picture icons.

Again, welcome!

Lisa

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Welcome to the forum! When your mouth comes open with the cpap on, the pressurized air that is supposed to keep your airway open just goes out into the room so you get no benefit from it, and you start having apneas again. Since it has been less than a week since you got your Swift, you should be able to exchange it for a Full Face Mask, which will cover both your nose and mouth. That way if your mouth comes open the air is not lost and your apneas don't happen. In time, you might learn to keep your mouth closed while you sleep, but if you can try a different mask now it might be worth a try. If you really like the Swift and want to keep using it, then, as others have said, you can try a chinstrap and/or tape to keep your mouth closed when you sleep. Don't trade the machine you have, its a pretty good one. BTW, if you want to check your nightly data, press and hold the right and left buttons on top of your machine for a few seconds. If the words "efficiency menu" come on the screen you can scroll through your nightly pressure, leak rate, and AHI information. Good luck, hopefully you make everynight a good one!

A full-face mask makes a good backup in case you get a head cold, too, and you can start training yourself to keep your mouth closed while using one. When I open my mouth at night it doesn't interfere with my CPAP, but it feels funny...can't quite describe it, kind of like my cheeks are inflating. That's usually enough to wake me up, and I've found I can prevent it if I try to keep my tongue pressed to the back of my top teeth and the roof of my mouth (not a very good description, but try it and you'll see what I mean). Good luck!