17 year old on cpap, could use some help!

So after years of struggling with extreme fatigue during the day i am now with a cpap machine, im a fit 17 year old kid so i was amazed to hear that I had a severe level of apnea. (dont know the exact AHI of my study but it was bad)

So at first i was set with a nasal mask, but kept waking with a dry mouth so now im on a full face, my complaint is that ive been using it for 2 weeks and still feel pretty tired, when examining my sleep data on sleepyhead i noticed lots of obstructive events, but even more i noticed hypopneas and lots of them. I tried changing my pressure from 6 to 9.5 and it made my night even worse.

attached i have my two details compared to when my pressure was 6 and 9.


side complaint: my mask is really aggravating my eczema and im waking with rashes all over my face, also i have extremely dark eye bags which i would assume is from really bad sleep, anyone have any tips for that?
side note: sleep on my back

http://imgur.com/a/LSozK (link to the comparsions of my data)

I'll let others tackle the charts as they are hard to see on a smart phone but a couple of suggestions:

1. A mask liner will really help your skin issues. Get two and you can wash one and wear one. Padacheek makes great mask liners. Go go Padacheek.com.

2. Sleeping on your back is about the worst position for apnea. Is there a reason you can't sleep on your side? It may take some getting used to and some pillows to help keep you on your side.

3. Hang in there. You're doing great and very fortunate to have caught this early. What led you to get tested so young?

Janknitz wrote:I'll let others tackle the charts as they are hard to see on a smart phone but a couple of suggestions:

1. A mask liner will really help your skin issues. Get two and you can wash one and wear one. Padacheek makes great mask liners. Go go Padacheek.com.

2. Sleeping on your back is about the worst position for apnea. Is there a reason you can't sleep on your side? It may take some getting used to and some pillows to help keep you on your side.

3. Hang in there. You're doing great and very fortunate to have caught this early. What led you to get tested so young?

definitely will look into the mask liners! and im worried about leakage when sleeping on my side due to it being the full face mask, so i resort to my back, just feels more relaxing.

I complained year after year about fatigue to my doctor, and spent the last year doing blood tests over and over till she sent me to a sleep specialist and right away he said he could tell from the structure of my throat i definitely had some form of it

That slight amount of variance in AHI between the 2 pressures could simply be normal nightly variation.
Going from AHI of 4 to AHI of 5 doesn't really mean much.

I suspect you simply need even more pressure to better prevent the airway from collapsing.

Are you waking often during the night for any reason? If so any idea why?
Have you tried auto (apap) adjusting mode to get an idea where your pressure wants to go.

It would really be helpful if we could see the graphs on the right side of that SleepyHead daily detailed report. Especially if the events are coming in clusters. Parts of the night with not much going on and parts of the night with some clustering.
See this thread for examples.
viewtopic/t103468/Need-help-with-screen-shots.html

There's some tricks to wearing a full face mask when you sleep on your side.

First, you can "hang" your mask off the edge of the pillow.

When you feel a leak just snuggle into the pillow a little to stop the leak.

If you tend to lay on one side mostly, loosen the headgear slightly on that side to accommodate pressure from the pillow and tighten slightly on the other side. These are minute adjustments.

Look at PapPillow.com - pillows with cutouts for masks.

Unless there is something I have missed, sleeping on the back is fine if that is what marunic prefers as long as the machine is adjusted appropriately.

49er

Pugsy wrote:That slight amount of variance in AHI between the 2 pressures could simply be normal nightly variation.
Going from AHI of 4 to AHI of 5 doesn't really mean much.

I suspect you simply need even more pressure to better prevent the airway from collapsing.

Are you waking often during the night for any reason? If so any idea why?
Have you tried auto (apap) adjusting mode to get an idea where your pressure wants to go.

It would really be helpful if we could see the graphs on the right side of that SleepyHead daily detailed report. Especially if the events are coming in clusters. Parts of the night with not much going on and parts of the night with some clustering.
See this thread for examples.
viewtopic/t103468/Need-help-with-screen-shots.html

Is this better? https://imgur.com/a/OpKFC

this was the night where I had a pressure of six on still

There is a little bit of clustering going on but not massive clusters.

Can you show the one at 9.5 cm and this time don't have any area highlighted and don't try to include anything but these graphs on the right (along with the usual on the left)
Events
Flow rate
Pressure
Leak

we don't need all those other graphs at this time.

The primary difference in AHI between the 6 cm and 9.5 cm nights appears to be Clear Airway events which we need to ignore at this time.

Can you please answer these 2 questions?

Are you waking often during the night for any reason? If so any idea why?
Have you tried auto (apap) adjusting mode to get an idea where your pressure wants to go?

Also can you use the last line in the box of addresses at imgur?
That would enable us to see the image in the post and it makes for easier comparison.
With links I have to click on each link and toggle back and forth for viewing and if you had the image itself we can just scroll quickly back and forth.

What they all said.

But also be patient. My sleep doc said it can take up to a month for your sleeping mind to trust that thing on your face and allow you to sleep deeply and really have your body take advantage of your new ability to sleep without trying to kill yourself.
Start a daily journal. Start by writing several pages of how you felt mentally, emotionally and physically before you started using the cpap machine. Then continue each day to detail how you felt that day. A lot of early changes can be very subtle, just changes in mood and perception. A month after I started I found a flyer for a workshop in my art medium that I had tossed aside before,"why bother" and I looked at it and went: "Why the hell aren't I going to this!?!!!"

Get a mask liner or adjust the mask tenseness on the face. Also if you can... get something like propmazion, or sleeping pills, to get used to it. If you get something that knocks you out, you'll more likely to sleep. I feel that the times when I get drowsy i'll atleast get 5 hours of CPAP time. I'm hoping I can up that to 7-8 hours atleast in the future.

marunic wrote: my back, just feels more relaxing

Once you have the machine settings correct, sleeping on your back should be just fine.

tiredandscared wrote:get something like propmazion, or sleeping pills

Let's stay away form stuff you can't even spell correctly.

There is no reason to recommend drugs at this point. They come with their own set of problems including drowsiness and daytime lethargy.

ChicagoGranny wrote: There is no reason to recommend drugs at this point. They come with their own set of problems including drowsiness and daytime lethargy.

Agree.
At this point we don't know if there is even an issue falling asleep and/or staying asleep or experiencing unwanted wake ups for whatever reason.
The reports are showing 8 plus hours of use and OP hasn't mentioned sleep issues yet. Just mask, skin and AHI concerns.