My introduction

I'm so happy for you! You seem to be where a lot of people take months to get to. If taking the mask off at night becomes a regular thang'.... you might get some medical tape and place one end of the tape on the mask while placing the other end on the cheek(s). When you take the mask off at night, the tape pulling on the cheeks will wake you up. You won't have to do it long.... you'll stop that in a while. You probably know that you can leave the mask on while going to the restroom. Just turn the machine off, unhook the hose.... and go... We need to look at your nightly graphs. Just one or two nights. Do what you are doing to post the summary and post a nightly graph. We don't need a good night.... we need a bad night.

You are doing great. Before long, you won't be able to sleep without the machine. I agree that the lower pressure of 4 is low, but I'm not sure if it is a problem for you or not. To get to the clinical screen, you push the silver/black knob at the same time you push the button under the screen. Hold it for three seconds and the clinical screen comes up. You can scroll down to the lower setting and make your adjustment. Know that "time" in cpap can be weeks instead of one night. Instant gratification may not happen in cpap time. I fought the cpap mask for over two weeks before I started to feel better. I also went thru several masks before I locked in on one I liked. I hope you wake up one morning so refreshed, you go "ah-ha".... but some people don't and it can be a long gradual improvement.

Sheriff

So I'm looking at my OSCAR data because I made some changes before sleeping and then had a pretty good sleep. I won't say today was an AH-HAH moment but I'm not actually tired right now after sleeping which is a step in the right direction. I did change my minimum to 8 after looking at my history and seeing that the pressure has never dipped below that since I've started using the machine. It seemed to work out well.

That said, I downloaded my OSCAR data and and really confused. I slept from about 5am until 12:30pm (I work overnights). It only tracked the last 30 minutes of sleep though. That's a lot of lost data. Any ideas as to why that would have happened? I was obviously getting pressure and the machine was on all night, otherwise I would have felt as if suffocating. I also obviously didn't get up half an hour early to turn on the machine.

Thoughts as to why this happened?

Your machine starts a recording period at 12 PM or Noon per the clock on the machine.
So it splits the reporting and looks weird.

You can change the machine clock to eliminate the split and/or depending on which OSCAR version you might be able to combine things...I am not sure about that one and need to check to make sure.

Oh, so the time I slept from 5:30am to noon would be counted as yesterday's sleep session?

I did change the clock on the machine while I was in the clinician settings because they had it set to east coast time and I'm on the west coast. Maybe I shouldn't have messed with that. But it sounds like this would have been the same issue anyway. I wonder if I do the math and figure out how to make the machine think something like my 2am is noon, then all the data would be in the right place.

Hmmmmmm

Ooops....fixing the split time thing isn't available in OSCAR like it was in SleepyHead. I just looked.

Most people who work nights and run into this problem with ResMed machines just alter the clock a bit so the machine thinks noon happens after they normally get up.

Like move the clock ahead a few hours. Your sleep times will be a bit off but who cares...hours of sleep is hours of sleep no matter what time it says you started.

You can move the clock ahead however many hours you want to make sure it doesn't split the night.

Cool. I'll do that. Thanks for looking into it for me.

Here is my pressure from last night then. I think changing it to 8 made a lot of sense. Less time in the zone where not much help was being provided. The machine adjusted up fairly quickly according to the previous graphs but why make it do that if I'm never that low.



I'm learning so much from you all. Thank you!!!

Sometimes the machine does sort of create its own new minimum pressure when it goes up and essentially stays up at a certain level. When that happens I personally don't see a problem with the machine making a new minimum on its own but some people find that starting higher at the more consistent number seems to help with sleep quality and how they feel.
Now if someone continually dropped way down to a lower number might be a different story but when the machine goes up and essentially establishes a new baseline minimum I don't see it as being any huge problem....especially if starting higher is a bit of a challenge for someone. I always say you have to get to sleep first and foremost before any of this other stuff matters.

I have nights where I might see my pressure going to 15 or 16 and a new baseline is sometimes established...and nights where it might never go past 11. I sleep through it all though so I don't really care what it does. My asleep AHI is always low (I often have to mentally remove false positives because sometimes my sleep quality is in the toilet due to back pain) so I just let it be.

Okay, so I'm at work and don't have my data with me so I can't show any of that right now but I wanted to provide an update.

The memory foam face mask is working well. I have very few leaks throughout any given night (often none) and I don't even have to run the leak test before I start my therapy anymore. Just put on the mask and go.

One thing that's been a struggle is that I'm frequently taking off the mask in the middle of the night. It's generally about 4 - 4 1/2 hours into my sleep. I have one night of 7 hours (since the last time I posted) where I didn't take it off the whole time and maybe one where I made it to 6. I can't say I don't remember doing it. I'm groggy and what not but it's not like I'm just waking up with the mask off with no idea how it happened. I remember doing it. I think generally it's because when I wake up, it feels really tight and bulky on my face and I want that feeling gone so I take it off. I only have it as tight as it needs to be in order to not leak. I don't strap it down with force or anything. I think I'm just over a month into this process (I didn't look at my start date). Does it continue to improve from here or do I need to make some adjustments?

I'm not feeling any benefits of the CPAP yet. I don't have any more energy. In fact, that one night when I slept 7 hours with it on the entire night, I felt run down, lethargic and generally blah. I'm not giving up by any means. I'm gonna stick with it and continue to improve the outcomes but I'd sure like one of those a-ha moments a lot of you talk about when I wake up one day and just feel … better. Even a little bit.

1) Show us more recent Oscar results - your pressure settings may need tweaking.
2) Consider trying Padacheek.com liners to help with small leaks.

Put a piece of medical tape with one end on the mask and the other end of the tape on your cheek. Do both sides. That way when you start to take the mask off without being conscious.... the pulling of the tape will wake you up. You won't have to do it long before you'll get used to keeping the mask on all night.

The infamous ah-ha moment.... some people don't get one. Some people do. I don't know how long you have has sleep apnea, but for most of us it has been many years before starting treatment. Thought sleep debt has been an interesting topic for me on this forum, I believe there is a period of repair the apnea caused. In most cases it may take a while to repair the damage which occurred for many years. Even then, the result could be gradual. Know that you are probably adding many years to your life.

Sheriff

I did not notice immediate improvement. It took a couple months before I noticed improvement. One morning I realised I could work the crossword puzzle in the paper and not fall asleep and I could sit and watch a movie on TV without falling asleep. My wife, on the other hand, noticed a big improvement immediately. Our test results were essentially the same (AHI of 48 and 49).

hoss555j5 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 16, 2020 3:38 am

I'm not feeling any benefits of the CPAP yet. I don't have any more energy. In fact, that one night when I slept 7 hours with it on the entire night, I felt run down, lethargic and generally blah. I'm not giving up by any means. I'm gonna stick with it and continue to improve the outcomes but I'd sure like one of those a-ha moments a lot of you talk about when I wake up one day and just feel … better. Even a little bit.

i'm echoing what others have said. no "A-HA!" for me either. it was a gradual process and linger than a month for me. my morning headaches eased up and eventually went away.

as to the mask, may i suggest going to youtube and searching for mask fitting videos appropriate to your mask? forgive me if that has been mentioned before. if it hasn't, you might could try, as we hoosiers are wont to say.

hoss555j5 wrote: ↑

Fri May 15, 2020 4:54 am

That's been the biggest challenge so far. The seal. I'm also getting some pressure-type pain already on the bridge of my nose. That reminded me that when I ordered the F20, I thought I had ordered it with the memory foam but apparently I ordered the silicone. I put in an order for a memory foam replacement and we'll see if that helps. Any opinions on this change?

I'm waking up with dry mouth each time despite taking the humidifier off of auto and setting it to 6. I might have to try a higher setting.

I find the F20 AirFit silicone cushion kinder to my nose than the memory foam AirTouch cushion. A couple months ago, I slept in (or went back to sleep) on a weekend and had the AirTouch on for more than 10 hours, and it gave me a red bump on the bridge of my nose that got bigger and more painful every day. Maybe I didn't replace the memory foam cushion often enough and it got compressed. Before this happened, it was comfortable. I've gone back to the silicone cushion which is better for my nose (which is finally healing), but I don't like silicone against my skin so I use a Pad-a-cheek liner made for the F20 (buy 2 so you always have a clean pad-a-cheek liner. I hated when I noticed the liner was gross just as I was going to bed. You wash it just by rubbing a minute in soapy water. I don't use the optional felt inserts that come with the pad-a-cheek liner, they made my sore nose worse.

To prevent leaks in the eye area, I wear a sleep eye mask over the top of my F20 mask, this keeps any air from flowing in my eye area.

I don't tighten my mask very much because I like it loose, but in the middle of the night it starts leaking a little at the bottom and then I tighten it up. Something changes over the course of the night (my face compresses?) so that I need to tighten the (velcro) straps of the F20 (just on the bottom) as the night goes on. But I suppose most people just tighten it up enough at the beginning of the night. I don't because of the way my face seems to change during the night, oddly enough, and I don't like tightness at the beginning of the night.

If you are getting a sore spot on the bridge of your nose, DON'T let it get worse, sleep with a bandaid on your nose, one that is 'ouchless' like this: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B013TBJG10 (it still not ouchless but less painful to remove in the morning).

I also sleep with a soft cervical collar which reduces my AHI.

For dry mouth, I sleep with Xylimelt lozenges in my cheeks (slightly sweet flavor hardly has a taste): https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07TYW877C
You might not always have dry mouth with CPAP. My dry mouth was all day and chronic even before I ever used CPAP.

Edit: Whoops, I didn't read all your posts and sounds like you are doing better with the sore nose and dry mouth already, that's good.

But I think you will start feeling better after you can manage to keep your mask on for 7 hours every night, not only 4-4.5 hours.

Please do post your Oscar charts, formatted exactly as instructed in the Oscar sticky post (e.g. turn off Pie chart and Calendar and ensure to have the charts in the default order).

lrob123 wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:49 pm

I also sleep with a soft cervical collar which reduces my AHI.

For dry mouth, I sleep with Xylimelt lozenges in my cheeks (slightly sweet flavor hardly has a taste): https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07TYW877C
You might not always have dry mouth with CPAP. My dry mouth was all day and chronic even before I ever used CPAP.

+1

well for both so i guess that's +2!

xylimelts can also be found locally at the drugstore. i know for sure that they are at both rite aid and cvs.

zonker wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 16, 2020 9:10 pm

+1

well for both so i guess that's +2!

xylimelts can also be found locally at the drugstore. i know for sure that they are at both rite aid and cvs.

Good to know that I don't have to mail order the Xylimelts if I run out. I really like that they now optionally come in bottles, because the foil packs made too much noise and woke up my husband if I replenished them in the middle of the night. The bottle is quiet, he is happier. Xylimelts are one of my top 'desert island' items, I hope they never stop making them. I guess my desert island would also need electricity for my CPAP machine.

Regarding "you might could try": I'm a Hoosier too but I haven't heard that, but I am just a transplant here. I'm near Indianapolis and I don't know whether they say that in this area of Indiana.