Yes, studies have shown that insomniacs usually have a difficult time telling WAKE vs. STAGE 1 and STAGE 2 NREM sleep apart: In some of these studies, they suddenly wake folks up from STAGE 1 or STAGE 2 sleep and ask them "Were you asleep or awake before the tech came in?" And insomniacs are far, far more likely than non-insomniacs to say YES even though the EEG indicates they were asleep until the tech woke them.napstress wrote:This is fascinating to me. I have heard of people thinking they were awake but were actually sleeping more than they thought they were. But this is just the reverse!robysue wrote:On my first bi-level titration sleep study, I was WIDE AWAKE (as measured by the EEG) for three solid hours after I woke up after my first sleep cycle. And I didn't even think I was awake the whole time---I thought I was drifting in and out of sleep. I was shocked when the PA showed me the graph of the sleep stages. I started to realize I was probably getting a lot less sleep than I thought I was.
So yes, like so much of my experience, my insomnia-related answers to "How much sleep do you think you got?" are non-standard. On that first bi-level titration study, I knew I was tossing and turning a lot after that first wake. (But the sleep before that first wake was heavenly---the best that I'd experienced on CPAP/BiPAP all fall long at the time.) I remember filling out the questionaire about how well I though I slept: "Yes" to dreaming; "much worse than normal" for overall quality (although I did mention how good that first chunk of sleep felt); "about an hour" for how long it took to get to sleep; and "slept about 4 hours total" for length of time asleep. And everything except "total time asleep" was right on the button. But my total sleep time was just under two hours total. And I'd finally fallen back asleep about 15--20 minutes before they woke me up saying the test was over.
The questions make sense to me. Whether you'll actually get the doc to answer them in language you understand is a different question. I was able to (finally) get a doc to tell me exactly how the "hypopneas with arousal" (my primary problem) were scored on my sleep tests and why they showed up in my diagnostic RDI but not my diagnostic AHI. But I never have gotten a straight answer to the question I'm most interested in. Which is: IF these "hypopneas with arousal" are indeed still happening when I use my machine in my own bedroom on lots of my bad nights, would they show up as hypopneas? or RERAs? or Flow limitations?Do these questions make sense? Sometimes I ask the doctor something that I have an incomplete understanding of based on what I read on this forum. Then, when she does not understand my question, I cannot reframe it! I believe I am grasping what you were saying, here, but just want to make sure that my questions are clear to you before I try to pose them to her.1. So the next time I see her, could I frame my questions this way and address what you're saying and be intelligible to the doctor? 1) Were the hypopneas scored under AASM Recommended standard or the AASM Alternative standard? 2) If scored under the Recommended standard, may some of the events scored as RERAs actually have been events that would have been scored as hypopneas under the Alternative standard? 3) Are you thinking that those "alternative standard hypopneas with arousal that got scored as RERAs" would show up in the Encore data as "hypopneas" if they were still happening in large numbers? 4) If under the AASM Recommended Standard, were the hypopneas with arousal scored for the RDI instead of as hypopneas?
