Waking after 5 hours tossing and turning

I admit I am prejudiced against the usual instructed use of ramp feature. I too was instructed to just hit the ramp every time I woke up to help me fall back asleep. I feel that advice is an injustice to users. The ramp will help you fall back asleep only if dealing with your prescribed pressure is the cause of you staying awake. The ramp will do nothing for the myriad of other reasons one might have trouble falling asleep. My troubles falling back asleep after waking were during the ramp time. Struggled for a long time before coming here and being advised to either stop the ramp or reduce its time and increase it's starting pressure. Ramp pressure by design is not therapeutic for apneas. (Are the designers assuming you are awake?) My premise is, how can your brain relax enough to fall asleep and stay asleep if it is on alert with impending suffocation every time you doze and an event happens? It could be counter productive. Say for instance one uses a 45 minute ramp 4 times over the course of a night. That's 3 hours at pressures not conducive to good sleep. I would suggest you try to stop hitting the ramp just for position changes. The ramp is for those who have trouble tolerating their prescribed pressure and need to ease into it. Nothing wrong if that's the issue. But outside of that specific need, I think we'd do well to make the ramp start at as a high a pressure we can comfortable tolerate and minimize the time so as to avoid sleeping essentially untreated. Meet your needs, but do not allow that practice to create other needs. Only you can best guess how much you actually NEED the ramp.

I joke that I am systematically turning off every "modern" cpap feature, and pretty soon I'm going to be back to 1985! Ramp just annoyed me, EPR kept me awake, I think the "auto" on the heated tube is too hot for me. I've even experimented with constant pressure for a week, although I did go back to 11-20.

But the point is that all of these comfort features are adjustable and you can turn them off because there is no "right answer" -- whatever works for you is right for you, and there is no way to figure it out without experimenting.

I am in the same boat as you as far as waking up and not being able to get back to sleep. I'm still working on trying little tweaks, but I'm afraid that this won't be cured by a cpap because in my case it's not being caused by a breathing problem. I can objectively measure that the bad apnea things that were happening before I was on cpap are not happening now -- I don't wake up feeling suffocated, and I don't wake up multiple times each night with my back teeth floating and hit morning in serious dehydration. But there are a lot of nights that I wake up multiple times (like 10-15-20 times). There are a lot of nights that I wake up and can't get back to sleep for an hour or two. But some nights are good, and I feel great, and I have not given up on cracking the code and solving the problem. (Or maybe I'll just age into another stage past menopause... )

Nowhere on the model sticker did it say it was the S9 Escape however, apparently that's what it is.
Trying to figure out how to get the data into a post... Interesting that you guys are turning the ramp off. Thanks for the different perspectives. I have raised the starting point for my ramp pressure because the mask was cutting off my air more then it was helping me. I've also changed ramp rates several times. It seems that longer is better and I like the advice to keep it as close to therapeutic as I can that doesn't prevent me from falling asleep.

jewill4 wrote:Nowhere on the model sticker did it say it was the S9 Escape however, apparently that's what it is.
Trying to figure out how to get the data into a post...

With the S9 machines the model name is right up by the on/off button and there's no real need to try to find model number.
If it says Escape up by the on/off button you aren't going to have much data as it only records hours of use.
Now if it happens to say Escape Auto....you will have at least AHI data but nothing else except maybe pressure.
I am not sure if SleepyHead will work with the Escape Auto or not but ResScan will.
If your machine just says Escape....there's nothing but hours of use for any software to report.

Should you be wrong about model name and you do have more data available this thread will explain how to insert images of the reports into your posts so we can see what you are seeing.
Screen shot thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=81072&p=737779#p737779

If you do indeed have the S9 Escape then you need to read this blog and pay special attention to the part near the bottom where it says "help, I am stuck with a brick". I would be taking it back and telling them I wanted a different machine. I like to use leak data as my reasoning for wanting data because they can't really negate the importance of making sure that leak data is available....they will tell you that AHI doesn't matter and you won't need it (which is a lie) but they can't really deny the importance of leak data...if leaks aren't controlled well then everything else can't be trusted to be accurate.
http://maskarrayed.wordpress.com/

jewill4 wrote:Any suggestions for things to try on this? I fall asleep fast and on my back as I was taught to. Lets say between 10:30 and 11 every night. About 4 am I'm awake and can't get comfortable and back to sleep. I'm not hot, cold or in pain. It seems from there on out I'll hit the button every time I become more awake like I was taught and every 15 minutes or so I'll go from fetal position left side to right side. I'll get close to asleep but every time I get close I wake up and hit the button like I'm supposed to and usually try my other side to get comfortable again. This usually lasts over an hour. Then I fall asleep for 30 minutes and my alarm goes off and I'm tired as hell. HELP!

Can you share your typical SleepyHead charts? AHI, FLs, snore, etc.