I'm a little scared right now

Hi. I've been using my CPAP machine for about a month now (since September 28th). I have:

Machine is: ResMed AirSense 10 Elite w/HumidAir Humidifier
Mask is: ResMed AirFit N10 For Her

I've been doing pretty well, until this morning.

I woke up, took the mask off and got out of bed, as usual. But this morning, I couldn't stop sucking in huge breaths of air. It was like I'd just run a marathon and was sucking in air. Half an hour later, I'm doing a little better, but I'm still taking a few huge, deep breaths, trying to get my breathing back to normal.

I just keep feeling the need to pull in as much oxygen as possible. I don't feel dizzy. I don't have any chest pains, or anything like that. I just can't stop sucking in huge amounts of air and it's scaring me. This is not a normal breathing pattern.

I'm not sure what could cause that all of the sudden. I'm going to be nervous about using the thing tonight.

I've never tried doing anything with my settings. They set it all for me at the store and I haven't touched the dials since. It says on my receipt that the setting is 9.

You may need to call the doctor. This is not normal for cpap or sleep apnea (a short reaction is normal for a bad apnea event, but over half an hour seems a bit extreme), and could be the start of something else. It sounds a lot like an asthma attack to me, but if you have no history of asthma, that doesn't make any sense. Or it could be an anxiety attack. Have you ever had one in the past (something to compare it to?) I used to have them as a teenager, and they would really scare me.

Also, while you are waiting, go ahead and download sleepyhead and take a look at your data. See if anything happened shortly before you woke up.

Could be cardiac related... please go to the ER or something and speculate re Cpap etc. after being checked out. Do it.

Well now I'm more scared.

I'm okay now, but that was scary. My diaphragm just kept contracting.

I have had panic attacks, but it was 25 years ago.

It says that I have asthma in my baby book, but then it was never mentioned again. I'm 56 and I'm not on any medication for it. I did have one asthma attack in my life, where I couldn't get any air at all. It was after I'd taken cold medicine, so I don't take anything when I have a cold now. I had a cold a month ago, but it's long gone.

If it's a cardiac event of any kind, time is extremely important in terms of being seen... speculate re asthma and cpap after being cleared! We're not MDs and you can second guess everything all day, but I'd want first to be sure things were ok before doing that. Cardiac events often occur first thing in the a.m.... known fact.

I guess I just wanted to know if this was a normal thing with CPAP use. Now I'm definitely feeling anxiety. I can tell the difference.

Maybe I'll at least go to the walk-in clinic and see what they think. If they say I should go to the ER, then I'll go. This sucks, as it's the first day of a week-long vacation.

Thanks for talking to me.

Please let us know what transpires...

Yeah, I think I'll definitely at least go to the walk-in clinic to get my vitals checked. I do have high blood pressure and probably asthma.

I'm feeling fine now, but I noticed that when I talked to my parents about what happened, I was getting a little out-of-breath. But just sitting here typing, I'm fine.

I've recently gone through a lot of tests for my heart, including a couple of EKGs, wearing a holter monitor for 48 hours, some blood tests and even an echocardiogram. The Cardiologist acted like I was wasting her time. "Yeah, you're right. Your heart skips beats. Get used to it. You don't need to see me again."

But she did send me for a sleep study, to see if I needed a CPAP machine and apparently I do.

I'm feeling a little calmer now, but I'll at least go and get my vitals checked. Thanks so much. I'll let you know what they said.

I downloaded the Sleepyhead software which was mentioned. It said that last night I had some major leakage and that the thing "blasted" me, as it put it, with 9.0 pressure all night.

When I woke up, I noticed that I was opening my mouth and gasping a little as the air just kept going down my throat. I took the mask off and then was trying to get my breath. My stomach was certainly distended.

I'm doing fine at the moment.

SleepyHead uses some rather extreme terminology when it really isn't maybe necessary.

It will say "major leakage" when in fact leaks weren't that major at all.
Look over in the statistics side of the daily detail page and scroll down a bit and look to see what it says for "time over red line"....what does it say?

I don't have any idea what could have caused your symptoms this morning.
Unless it was maybe related to aerophagia (the stomach bloating thing) which can cause a huge amount of discomfort for some people and maybe there was a little anxiety mixed in.

Are you using EPR Exhale Pressure Relief? If you are...at what setting?
If not...might want to add it as it will help with the aerophagia issues.
Explained here if you don't know about it.
https://sleep.tnet.com/home/files/resme ... -guide.pdf

Oh...9 cm doesn't really qualify for "blasted" even though I know it feels like it to you.

Greyfort wrote:I downloaded the Sleepyhead software which was mentioned. It said that last night I had some major leakage and that the thing "blasted" me, as it put it, with 9.0 pressure all night.

When I woke up, I noticed that I was opening my mouth and gasping a little as the air just kept going down my throat. I took the mask off and then was trying to get my breath. My stomach was certainly distended.

I'm doing fine at the moment.

Actually 9.0 is a relatively moderate pressure. Your machine will go to 20. If your machine is an Elite, the pressure is set to 9 and will stay fixed at that level all night. Lets look at the Sleepyhead graphs.................What was your AHI on Sleepyhead?

Oh ...when you have time could you post last night's detailed results from Sleepyhead?

How post images explained here
https://sleep.tnet.com/reference/tips/imgur

and look at this thread for examples of what we need to see....don't need all those graphs that you see...we only need the main graphs and if we need more we will ask for them.
viewtopic/t103468/Need-help-with-screen-shots.html

Wow, thanks. There's a bunch of stuff here that I'm not familiar with, being new to CPAP usage, but I'll look it up and report.

I talked to a nurse. She said that as long as I'm not feeling dizzy and my pulse isn't rapid or irregular, then I'm probably okay. Anxiety has probably just kicked in, making things worse. I'm still breathing a little funny on and off, but that's most-likely my anxiety reaction to it, because when I'm not thinking about it, I'm fine. She said there's always ER should I feel the need to go there. Otherwise, I can mention it at my doctor's appointment on Monday.

I hate this. It's definitely time to get serious about losing some weight. Not that it would get me off the machine, from what I've read, but it would certainly help me health-wise.

I can't find the time over red line reading. But here's what I see at the left. Oops. I hit something and now there's a big smiley face looking at me. Anyway, now it looks like this. I don't know what any of the numbers mean. Oh, I see the redline thing. It actually says "redline." LOL I was looking a a red line.

2 % of the time over "red line" which on the ResMed machine is 24 L/min...2% of 6 hours is a little over 7 minutes total. Not earth shattering "major leakage" at all.

You can look at the leak graph to see if it was mainly one time frame or just multiple times that add up to 7 minutes. Either way not a big deal unless you remember waking up a large number of times fiddling with the mask because of leaks.

ResMed says that as long as you don't hit the 30% or more of the time over the red line that leaks are "acceptable". I personally prefer to use 10 % or below as a guideline myself along with the "it doesn't wake me up thing". Any leaks that disturb sleep a lot need to be dealt with no matter how big or how little but not necessarily because they are impacting the therapy itself but because multiple wake ups mess with our sleep quality and we have to have good sleep quality to have any hope of feeling whatever good numbers we might have.

Have you seen a doctor yet? This was/is a 911 emergency. If you are feeling better, don't assume it has passed. Get to a doctor today.