Wife is going to leave me I keep falling asleep

TankerBell wrote:It is indeed in APAP mode even though sleepyhead shows otherwise. I will turn the max pressure up to 15 tonight. I will try to post stats this evening when I'm at home. If I can't tonight, I definitely will be able to do so tomorrow evening.

One further thought. You have a nasal pillow mask, which I hated. Different things work for different people, so I'm not the best judge. But you have to keep your mouth shut at all times, or else you leak like a tea kettle, which renders your machine useless and is highly annoying to your bed partner. Also, you may find that this mask becomes much less tolerable at higher pressures. My pressure is 11 minimum, and I always felt like my nose was going to explode. So you may want to consider a different mask at some point.

Unfortunately, the nasal masks and full face masks are even more "clinical" looking and unsightly (although the nasal pillow blows your nose up like a balloon, also not a really sexy look! ). But again, this is first and foremost about YOU getting better.

SleepyHead is reporting (at least on the statistics page) 0 % of time above large leak threshold.
Unless that is an error...leaks aren't and issue and that includes any potential mouth breathing with nasal pillows.
Mouth breathing leaks are still leaks and will get flagged. They don't happen without the machine flagging them.
I would want to see the leak graphs to confirm but I don't think mouth breathing is the issue.

I think the issue is related to the pressure not being able to do a good job (that big cluster) because the pressure max was limited.
Max of 10 may or may not get the job done...but worth a try as is just opening up the max and see where the pressure wants to go. As long as pressure variations aren't disturbing sleep and it brings the AHI down and breaks up the clusters...no need to worry about what the max is. If varying pressures create sleep issues...we can limit things to lessen that impact.

An increase in minimum might also help out...again...need to see more reports to know for sure.

andy88488 wrote:
Unfortunately, the nasal masks and full face masks are even more "clinical" looking and unsightly (although the nasal pillow blows your nose up like a balloon, also not a really sexy look! . But again, this is first and foremost about YOU getting better.

I don't know whether or not this will work for you Tanker, but if you are just putting your mask on and going to sleep without any contact between you and your wife, you might consider our almost nightly routine instead:

On most nights although not all, I do NOT put my mask on when we first get into bed. Instead, my girlfriend and I turn towards each other, cuddle and reach around and give each other simultaneous backrubs and affection. And of course sometimes this leads to a lot more than that , but even just that amount of contact and affection for even a few minutes makes a huge difference. Even just lying together for 5 or 10 minutes, facing each other with no mask on and no machine running makes a world of difference.

Only after this nightly routine do I sit back up, put on my mask, turn on the machine and turn out the light.

That's a great way to end any day, and maybe just maybe that's what she is missing.

Worth a try.

Regards, Nate

For you folks who are asking him to post his data, he started THIS thread about five days ago and some of us have been trying to advise him regarding his settings and have been viewing his reports. He started out at too low of a pressure and that was not very helpful......so, he's been raising his pressures to find better settings. And, YES, he IS using APAP mode.

viewtopic/t101247/AHI-getting-higher-as ... inues.html


Den

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I think the forum was broken this morning. I kept trying to post my stats from my computer and each time I hit submit it would take me to the homepage. I will try to post again later on. I am posting from my phone right now. I had my lowest ahi to date last night. 1.56.

I noticed that last night--and again just a minute ago.
Tankerbell, good going!

So I went to the sleep doctor today and explained my problem. He took a look at my stats and said all was well, and that I should not be falling asleep as much at this point. He gave me a trial of Nuvigil to try. I took it around 8 a.m. As of 2:15 p.m. I haven't fell asleep. I have a bit of a headache, which I hear is normal. Hopefully won't be using the Nuvigil too long and will get more benefits from the CPAP as time goes on.

TankerBell wrote:So I went to the sleep doctor today and explained my problem. He took a look at my stats and said all was well, and that I should not be falling asleep as much at this point. He gave me a trial of Nuvigil to try. I took it around 8 a.m. As of 2:15 p.m. I haven't fell asleep. I have a bit of a headache, which I hear is normal. Hopefully won't be using the Nuvigil too long and will get more benefits from the CPAP as time goes on.

Nuvigil is great, but I had the experience that the results were only temporary. And others have had that as well. In my experience, it worked fine for a week or two and then I seemed to develop a tolerance. I hope that's not the case for you, but it might be.

TankerBell wrote:So I went to the sleep doctor today and explained my problem. He took a look at my stats and said all was well, and that I should not be falling asleep as much at this point. He gave me a trial of Nuvigil to try. I took it around 8 a.m. As of 2:15 p.m. I haven't fell asleep. I have a bit of a headache, which I hear is normal. Hopefully won't be using the Nuvigil too long and will get more benefits from the CPAP as time goes on.

Obviously, your doctor is NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer.......

Hang in there.


Den

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Wulfman... wrote:

TankerBell wrote:So I went to the sleep doctor today and explained my problem. He took a look at my stats and said all was well, and that I should not be falling asleep as much at this point. He gave me a trial of Nuvigil to try. I took it around 8 a.m. As of 2:15 p.m. I haven't fell asleep. I have a bit of a headache, which I hear is normal. Hopefully won't be using the Nuvigil too long and will get more benefits from the CPAP as time goes on.

Obviously, your doctor is NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer.......

Hang in there.


Den

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I was a little put off by the place when one of the nurses was surprised that a program called Sleepyhead exists and lets you view your own stats... The doctor however was well aware of Sleepyhead and encourages exactly what we are doing here. He did say that it could take a lot more time to get the full benefits of CPAP, so I don't mean to make it sound like he was saying I should be all better. He just said I shouldn't be falling asleep 8 times a day and going to bed at 7:30 p.m. still... I did tell him about the problems I'm having at home, which I think made him decide to give me the med to help me stay awake. I can't be falling asleep on evenings that my wife is working while I'm supposed to be watching my 2-year-old daughter.

I will say that the effects of this medicine seemed stronger when I took it this morning. By noon it didn't feel as strong, but is still enough to keep me awake. The headache developed around noon as the strength seemed to wear down a bit.

But.......the pressure range he prescribed for you was clearly ineffective......

And, if he knew about Sleepyhead, why didn't he recommend you using it to monitor your therapy?


Den

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Wulfman... wrote:But.......the pressure range he prescribed for you was clearly ineffective......

And, if he knew about Sleepyhead, why didn't he recommend you using it to monitor your therapy?


Den

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I'm not making excuses for him. I do trust him, though. He is a younger guy. Graduated from Vanderbilt. My understanding is that most sleep titration studies don't get it right on the first try. There is always some periods of adjustment on pressure. That cluster of bad apnea I had with the old pressure setting only happened one night. My average AHI is 2.67 before I adjusted the pressure up some. So it wasn't off that bad. I really haven't struggled with the therapy at all. I should add that my problems really didn't start being this severe (severe enough to see a doctor) until about 6 months ago, though I have had problems staying awake all day most of my life, even when I was skinny (which now I know this is a breathing disorder and really has nothing to do with weight).

And in fairness, this was the first time we'd seen one another since I got my CPAP, so he hadn't had a chance to mention Sleepyhead...

andy88488 wrote:

TankerBell wrote:So I went to the sleep doctor today and explained my problem. He took a look at my stats and said all was well, and that I should not be falling asleep as much at this point. He gave me a trial of Nuvigil to try. I took it around 8 a.m. As of 2:15 p.m. I haven't fell asleep. I have a bit of a headache, which I hear is normal. Hopefully won't be using the Nuvigil too long and will get more benefits from the CPAP as time goes on.

Nuvigil is great, but I had the experience that the results were only temporary. And others have had that as well. In my experience, it worked fine for a week or two and then I seemed to develop a tolerance. I hope that's not the case for you, but it might be.

I really hope it doesn't wear off. My doctor told me that it is advisable to take a couple days off the medicine every couple of weeks to keep the med working. Hopefully my wife can live with a couple days of downtime to let me recharge so the medicine is effective. And, of course, I don't want to be on this stuff forever. After another month or so, I'll take some days off and see how I feel without it.

Pugsy wrote:SleepyHead is reporting (at least on the statistics page) 0 % of time above large leak threshold.
Unless that is an error...leaks aren't and issue and that includes any potential mouth breathing with nasal pillows.
Mouth breathing leaks are still leaks and will get flagged. They don't happen without the machine flagging them.
I would want to see the leak graphs to confirm but I don't think mouth breathing is the issue.

I think the issue is related to the pressure not being able to do a good job (that big cluster) because the pressure max was limited.
Max of 10 may or may not get the job done...but worth a try as is just opening up the max and see where the pressure wants to go. As long as pressure variations aren't disturbing sleep and it brings the AHI down and breaks up the clusters...no need to worry about what the max is. If varying pressures create sleep issues...we can limit things to lessen that impact.

An increase in minimum might also help out...again...need to see more reports to know for sure.

Will post reports tonight after wife goes to work. I did learn my machine was not in AutoPap mode before. I switched it to AutoPAP last night and the pressure never got above 9 and I had my lowest AHI to date of ~1.5. That really bad cluster like I posted happened a max of two times, causing my AHI on two nights to be ~7.5. The average AHI for all my time with the machine was ~3 before I switched to AutoPAP.

When in CPAP mode, the minimum number is what the machine goes to when it is in SenseAwake mode. That's what confused everything before. My minimum is now set at 6 and max at 18 in AutoPAP mode.

Wulfman... wrote:Obviously, your doctor is NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer.......

well, that's not surprising, you should never keep knives in a drawer, if you don't slice yourself up reaching in there, then the knives will all get dulled and blunted ( like his doctor ) by banging around into each other!