I did wake up to catch myself playing with the air over my vocal cords at one point though. And today I’m hoarse.
♀️ I wasn’t mouth breathing at all! My mouth was properly closed. I was just enjoying the tickling sensation in my throat, apparently. Sigh.I’m still not using it every night, because I often get a weird feeling like I can’t breathe or I’m breathing too much stale air or I’m out of sync with the machine for a long time, and I feel like I’m suffocating so I have to take it off before I can properly sleep. Other nights I’m fine from the start and I sleep like the dead! I haven’t figured out what the difference is yet. I’m a little baffled, honestly. I’ve played with my pressure settings, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
I have noticed that on the nights when I manage to wear it, I do feel a lot more well-rested when I wake, even if I woke up a lot during the night. I also dream, for the first time in years! My average AHI runs under .5 when I do wear it, but I still seem to hypoventilate a fair amount, and of course the ASV just lets me because it’s not programmed to hit a baseline target tidal volume every time, as long as I sink into hypoventilation slowly enough. I’m not too worried for now. My O2 has been okay, so I’m going to keep trying to use it and take the data to my doctor in a few months and ask what she thinks about my tidal volume numbers.