Finally found a use for my door sto^H^H^H CPAP machine

I finally found a condition under which my CPAP machine actually helped me to sleep!

Right now, I have what I've been calling "the flu" and my wife says is "a cold" (what do I know? As I've said, I'm not a doctor. I have a fever, sore throat, and feel really crappy. Cold, flu, what's the diff...)

Anyway, the sore throat is really nasty and I couldn't sleep at all (without the CPAP, because I needed to get to sleep, not toss and turn with it on like normal).

However, the dryness of a NH winter's air kept drying out my throat and making my sore throat about 20 times as bad, so that every time I'd swallow in mysleep, I'd wake myself back up again.

Enter the CPAP machine, with H/H set at 4 (out of 5 on the RemStar machine). Bingo, nasal passages and throat stayed moist, sore throat pain diminished (not gone, but a whole lot better), and I actually slept.

Woo woo. So I guess now I know that in order to use a CPAP machine, I just need to be SICK. I'll look into finding a source of varied sore-throat germs, so I can re-infect myself with a new one after my body kills off the old one.

Liam, probably loopy from fever.

Now, see, this is exactly what I've been advocating for months. You CAN and SHOULD use your xPAP exactly as normal during a cold or the flu, not discontinue it. The humidity does help the symptoms of congestion and sore throat because of the moist air. Many years ago, it used to be the norm to sleep with a humidifier at your bedside, heated, unheated to help you breathe at night when you had chest congestion. How is this any different?

BTW I think I've got the same bug. I wait for night to come so I can strap it on and get some relief.

Janelle,

Finally! someone who agrees with me on this one. An xPAP with high humidity is what every cold sufferer should be lucky enough to have. Why would someone who has it, stop using it because of a cold.

The Docs probably say to take a break from the cpap and then tell the patient to sit over the vaporizer.

I agree, and were I actually successfully using the CPAP, I wouldn't have stopped.

However... I think trying to use the CPAP is part of why I came down with this. My wife Janet and two step daughters have been battling this cold for several weeks now, and I never came down with it. It didn't hit me until a particularly bad period of not sleeping over several nights.

Some part of me thinks that the lowered resistance caused my the lack of sleep (which was in turn caused by discomfort from the CPAP machine headgear) allows this to hit, and so as a result, I felt it better to get some poor sleep and get better, than to get none and not.

Liam, achy and sleepy and groany and sniffly and... who were the other three dwarves?

Come on now Liam! don't blame your cpap for your getting a cold. You said Janet is sick? And I recall you earlier mentioning something about waking every two hours and suckling her breasts. Sounds like a sure way to catch a cold!


Your jokes have come back to haunt you.

That's true, since she has a tendency to sneeze right on them, that's probably where I picked it up.

Liam, in the grand scheme of things, he thinks it was worth it.