M-series AutoCpap machine users--help me please!

Newbie of four months here! Been to two sleep studies-one put me at a pressure of 12 and the second one at 8 cm. I have been using a Resmed S8 elite machine rented from the medical supply store. Now they want me to buy it and I HATE it! The WHEEZING noise coming from it makes me insane. It's not coming from the mask (I use an Optilife cradle cushion). I have tried everything--towels, fans, putting it under the bed, ear plugs. I have not tolerated this whole thing for more than 2 hours a night before I fling it. I am TIRED and I have a BAD ATTITUDE. I noticed a lot of you on this forum (and I spend hours on it avoiding going to bed) use the M-series machine. I want the one with A-flex. Makes more sense to me that the machine self adjusts and obviously from the sleep studies my needs change. I am taking the S8 back to the Med Supply place this Friday so they can "check it out" but I'm afraid I'm stuck with it. Can you request any kind of machine you want? I'm starting to realize I should have not signed anything and should buy my own equipment on cpap.com. But who knew? Do you guys like your M-series machine? THANKS!

GoodnightHoser wrote:...... Can you request any kind of machine you want? .........

You can. But to get what you want you usually have to demand it and negotiate for it.

What are the terms of the contract you signed? Can't you just drop the rental and order from cpap.com? What is your insurance situation?

I only like the M-series for the software/data capability. My A-Flex is loud. I may buy one of those Whisper caps for it, https://www.cpap.com/productpage/respir ... r-cap.html. That Respironics recently came out with this device is an indication that the machine is loud.

That's what I'm hoping I can do. But if you buy from cpap.com how do you know you'll like what you get. This whole thing seems like a very expensive "hit an miss" situation. You don't like your m-series?

[quote="GoodnightHoser"]That's what I'm hoping I can do. But if you buy from cpap.com how do you know you'll like what you get. This whole thing seems like a very expensive "hit an miss" situation. You don't like your m-series?

I had the ResMed Elite CPAP and I'm convinced my Respironice Auto M /AFLEX is quieter. Either that or the 8' hose makes it quieter than the 6'.

As for switching to the Auto, *SOME* DME's (NOTE - NOT ALL) love to play doctor and tell you what you need. The bottom line is they are required to supply what the doctor prescribed. If your doc just wrote CPAP that's what you get. My doc did that until I convinced him I heed APAP. My issue was not sound levels it was serious bloating.

At someone's suggestion, I even took in a specific equipment list for him to prescribe. Doctors want to doctor and let DME's deal with model numbers. The fact that I had done my homework was a factor in his finally writing the script that way. The DME was not happy about it but really came through in the end.

Old Lincoln--what do you mean by serious bloating and how did the apap help? Does that mean the straight pressure is too high for you sometimes? The med supply place just called me and told me to bring my S8 in to adjust the pressure since my last sleep study two weeks ago. Are they going to be mad when they find out I adjusted it myself (via the "secret cpaptalk.com underground railroad"?). I live out in the sticks and can't get to town at the drop of a hat. Didn't want to wait t0 drop the pressure down so I did it myself. Will I go to jail for that? Don't know if I should pretend I have no idea how it got there.... They are going to look at the machine to see why it wheezes. Maybe that's the noise they all make. My husband thinks we hosers should contact that Dyson guy that designs the vacuumn cleaners and have him design us a decent QUIET cpap machine. Goodnight Hoser

GoodnightHoser wrote:Old Lincoln--what do you mean by serious bloating and how did the apap help? Does that mean the straight pressure is too high for you sometimes? The med supply place just called me and told me to bring my S8 in to adjust the pressure since my last sleep study two weeks ago. Are they going to be mad when they find out I adjusted it myself (via the "secret cpaptalk.com underground railroad"?). I live out in the sticks and can't get to town at the drop of a hat. Didn't want to wait t0 drop the pressure down so I did it myself. Will I go to jail for that? Don't know if I should pretend I have no idea how it got there.... They are going to look at the machine to see why it wheezes. Maybe that's the noise they all make. My husband thinks we hosers should contact that Dyson guy that designs the vacuumn cleaners and have him design us a decent QUIET cpap machine. Goodnight Hoser

Stick to your guns, if you don't like the S8 don't accept it, take it back and leave it on the counter, tell them you will look for another DME.

The APAP will help with aerophagia or the bloating. You can have a pressure like 6.5 and it will automatically move up to 12 if needed but once the event is taken care off it will drop back down to the Minimum set pressure.

As mentioned, don't let the local yocal DME railroad you into that machine. They get paid 1 price for the machine, so the cheaper machine they supply you the more profit they make on the transaction.

IF your doctor wrote AFLEX on your script they have no option but to supply you with an autopap or not supply anything.

The S8 has been noisy since it came out, only since they came out with the AutoSet II has it quietened down. If the DME wants to swap your S8 Elite for a S8 AutoSet II, I'd go for that. But it has to say AutoSet II on the top, if not don't accept it.

What ever machine you "accept" you will have to most likely keep for the next 5 years, because insurance won't buy you a new machine every year. 5yrs is the avg.

Complain, complain complain about the pressure and bloating, go here print it out and tell them if they cannot get you this machine then you will go elsewhere:

http://www.resmed.com/en-us/products/fl ... u=products

I have no idea what is on my script. I have also never seen any written evaluations of my sleep studies. All I know was what I could cajole out of the sleep technicians (one of whom was a CNA) when I left in the morning. At my second sleep study I seemed to know more than the little gal that was running it and all my information has come from YOU guys. I also don't know if my machine is all that noisy since I've never tried any others. I just know it bothers ME. I am SO tired (no pun intended) of my friends who are cpapnirvanaevangelists. I hate this. Thanks for letting me vent, Snoredog. Goodnight Hoser

GoodnightHoser wrote:I have no idea what is on my script. I have also never seen any written evaluations of my sleep studies. All I know was what I could cajole out of the sleep technicians (one of whom was a CNA) when I left in the morning. At my second sleep study I seemed to know more than the little gal that was running it and all my information has come from YOU guys. I also don't know if my machine is all that noisy since I've never tried any others. I just know it bothers ME. I am SO tired (no pun intended) of my friends who are cpapnirvanaevangelists. I hate this. Thanks for letting me vent, Snoredog. Goodnight Hoser

Your Doctor SHOULD be sharing a copy of your sleep studies with you, you NEED to ask for a copy of both studies. You should also have the prescription sent over to the DME so that you can order mask parts on your own (even if you don't, you WILL need these items going forward). If you want your doctor to support you with the machine, you need to download the information from Resmed.com, Respironics etc. and educate yourself on them. Changing sleep positions, allergies, bloating and aerophagia are all good reasons to have an autopap. Autopaps also give you sleep data so you can track your progress.

Having a copy of the script, you can buy that machine online if you want to, I mean it is your health, machine costs less than a laptop or flatscreen TV.

The Resmed AutoSet II wouldn't be a bad machine to have, it has a lot of new features and they made it much quieter, it also gives you data on the LCD without any software needed. Doesn't give snore data but you don't need that anyway. The Vantage is on its way out or being discontinued so don't accept it, it is noisy compared to the new AutoSet II.

Note: IF you return your current S8 due to problems with bloating, you basically fail "CPAP" therapy, a minimal criteria before insurance will pay for autopap. That means they can then supply you with an autopap if it means you will continue on with therapy. It is all about when push comes to shove.

If they won't supply you with the AutoSet II, call your doctors office for copies of the PSG's (you have a legal right to them) and a replacement script and tell them you want to go elsewhere for therapy. You can then fax that script over to an on-line dealer and get the machine shipped to you. But I suspect the DME will fold and get you what you ask for if you threaten to walk. If they say you need to pay more or that insurance won't cover it offer to pay up to $200 to get the AutoSet II, if they won't go for that walk.

If DME won't work with you (they are making a ton of money on it), then another good reason to walk.

I am probably not in the right place , but I am totally new here. I discovered this wonderful site because a relative did some Googling and told me to check it out, and the link she happened to send took me to this discussion.

I am completely new to this whole thing, not just this site, and I am so relieved to find a place where someone may be able to tell me something about this. I read the post from GoodnightHoser with great sympathy.

I am on a 3-week home study, I guess you could call it. My endocrinologist sent me for a sleep apnea test because I told him that I had returned to all the symptoms I had before he straightened out my thyroid medication (the short list: tired all the time, no stamina, cannot lose weight even though I've never gone off WW program with which I had maintained my goal weight for four years before I mysteriously started gaining weight and after three years, my doctor where I lived at the time finally checked my thyroid and diagnosed me with hypothyroidism (after moving to my current residence in another state, I found an endocrinologist, he determined I was not responding to generic med and put me on brand Synthroid, I did begin to feel better and to lose weight, lost 20 pounds [out of the 85 pounds I put on because of the thyroid] over about six months---and then stopped cold losing weight last November as well as resuming the fatigue and so on), and I am working out with personal trainers twice a week and taking ballroom dance lessons 2-4 times a week ) and I thought maybe we needed to adjust the dosage. He insisted my bloodwork is fine and said sleep apnea can often produce the same symptoms, and referred me for a sleep study.

When I met with the sleep medicine doctor after my sleep study, she said that frustratingly, I showed too few apneas per hour of sleep for my insurance to pay for further testing, I think she called it titration with an oxygen machine. She said I had a large number of ... can't remember what it was called, but basically my own snoring is waking up my brain even if I don't wake up to full consciousness, and that's disturbing my sleep and so on. But the insurance company doesn't look at those instances, only the # of sleep apneas per hour. She said that normally they would recommend that losing weight would help with the snoring issue, however, part of the reason I was there is that I had been trying to lose weight and could not . So she sent a machine home with me to use for three weeks (I'm to take it back on the 16th) and they will dump the data and see how much oxygen it had to give me to compensate for my not getting however much it felt I should be with each breath, and maybe that would give them some ammo with the insurance company.

The only information I can find on the machine to tell you what I have is: AutoSet T Sullivan, and a sticker that reads Year 2000 Compliant.

I have only used it 4 times now. I could so sympathize with GoodnightHoser because I had the same problem: The first night I tried to use the machine, I had to take it off after 1 hour because I was to the point of tears for wanting to go to sleep but not being able to over the noise----"wheezing" is a good word even though I had not thought of it on my own. And yes, it's definitely coming from the machine. I actually did not have much trouble with noise from the mask or air escaping from the mask---except when I tried to sleep on my side, which is how I'm used to sleeping. Could not do it. I had thought at first the steady rhythm of the sound the machine made would act like those soothing-sound generators and would lull me to sleep. But no go. It absolutely drove me crazy. My husband reported that he was vastly relieved when I took it off because he couldn't get to sleep, either, and he usually can sleep through anything.

My husband expressed concern because he's been meaning to bring up sleep apnea with his doctor because DH knows he has sleep apnea and his own snoring sometimes wakes him up and he knows it's detrimental to his own well-being and preventing him from feeling rested . . . but now he is worried, because if the only treatment is a machine like the one I've been using, he knows that he could not do it. If he can't even use his old college-days biofeedback tricks to convince himself that that sound is a nice steady soothing rhythm that he can go to sleep to, then he won't be able to sleep with a mask over his nose and hooked up to one of those, himself.

The next night I did actually make it to sleep, though it took nearly the same hour that I tried the first night. However, I had an episode where I woke up already fumbling to remove the mask, I thought that I just got up after the mask was off and used the restroom, then when I came back, my husband's snoring meant I couldn't go back to sleep, so I moved to our guest room for the rest of the night, and I noted that it was 3:00am when I left our room. In the morning, my husband reported that in actuality, at about 1:10am, roughly two hours after I put the mask on, I suddenly sat up, removed the mask, and lay back down and went back to sleep. He thought perhaps I had had an apnea and I thought in my sleep that the mask was preventing me from breathing so I took it off. He was still awake because he couldn't go to sleep over the sound of the machine and he had been just about to leave the room when I sat up, took the mask off, and turned off the machine. I had thought my removing the mask and getting up and changing rooms had been one seamless sequence of events, but there was actually about a two-hour gap between my removing the mask and changing rooms.

After that, it was a number of days before I could work back up to trying the mask. I would literally think as I went to bed at night: "I can't afford to spend hours trying to get to sleep, I need to get right to sleep tonight, I've got too much going on tomorrow." Or "I just don't feel up to working that hard to sleep with that thing on."

But I would try again because I'm concerned about the heart issues that were explained to me from sleep apnea and the snoring-induced brain-waking episodes. As well as the perpetual fatigue, waking up tired, and not being able to lose any weight no matter what I do. So I wanted to try to collect enough data for the doctor at the sleep medicine place to be able to determine something.

The third time it took me two hours to get to sleep, I kept opening my eyes and looking at the clock; I watched my husband get up and leave the room after I'd been on the machine for an hour, he thought I was asleep but I wasn't. The only reason I know I eventually fell asleep is: I decided the earplugs I was trying hurt too much and the noise of the machine was just too annoying and sleep-disruptive, so I sat up and removed the earplugs and took off the mask and made sure the machine was off-----and looked at the clock and saw that it was 1.5 hours later than the last time I had looked at the clock, so I had obviously fallen asleep.

Last night was the fourth time, and even though I thought I was "drifting off to sleep" several times, it never happened, but again my husband left the room to sleep in the guest room. I lay awake for about 15 more minutes (I know only from looking at the clock after the events I'm about to describe), getting increasingly frustrated at my inability to fall asleep. Every shift of my head seemed to be shifting the mask and I couldn't get it to stop leaking air, so I tried to do what I was instructed to do when they sent the thing home with me (and which I've done other times, too): I pulled the mask out from my face and then carefully re-placed it over my nose, making sure it was sealed all around.

While I did that, the machine stopped running. At first I thought nothing of it; sometimes when I was trying to adjust the straps around my head, I would pull the mask away and the machine would go off, apparently an automatic shutoff feature, and I would just push the button to turn it back on. So last night I tried that----and it didn't come back on. I thought: Does it need to cycle through and I usually take longer to turn it back on? I pushed the button again, and nothing happened. I tried one more time, then finally got out of bed so I could bend over the small display screen on the top of the machine, and I saw:

SYSTEM ERROR
CALL SERVICE

So I won't be using that machine anymore. I tried to go to sleep after that, but unfortunately the whole episode had waked me up to the point of staring at the ceiling. So I went to the computer and sent an e-mail to some friends I've been keeping up to date on my thyroid and therefore on the sleep apnea stuff, and told them what happened.

I voiced the curiosity as to: did the system error occur because of something I did when I pulled the mask out that last time? Or has the machine been defective in some way and the problems I've had and my husband have had the whole time been because it was malfunctioning?

That was why my sister did her Googling and sent me the link that brought me here. It's only now, some 12 hours after that incident, that I've been able to get back to e-mail and find the link and discover this site.

Reading GoodnightHoser's description of experiences makes me think that the noise my machine has made is not due to malfunction, that it would make that noise anyway.

But still I thought maybe someone could lend me some insight after reading my experiences, as well as direct me to the correct forum for this discussion since I don't seem to have an M-series machine.

So thank you kind people for listening and TIA for any insights anyone can offer to the bemused newbie !

GoodnightHoser wrote: Do you guys like your M-series machine? THANKS!

...Hoser, yes, I like my Mseries auto w/aflex.
I have it placed in the bottom of my night stand.
I drilled 4- 1 1/2 holes in the back of the stand for air intake.
When I'm masked and ready drop into the abyss, I place a large
pillow over the entire opening of the cabinet. This accomplishes a
number of things:
it blocks out those blue lights that have been causing so much trouble lately.
it also muffles the noise. What noise does come through did bother me...at first.
I decided that since this was to become part of my life, I have changed my attitude
toward them. I now think of those noises as the sound of my new health.
Now, some 10 wks on the hose, I hardly even notice it anymore....and if
I do, I just think how thankful I am to be on the road to better health.

Hope this helps!

Bless your heart, you've had a hard time. Many of us here have gone through some of the same things.
I suggest you go to this link and print it out. That's what I did, and I keep it beside me, when it comes to Cpap.
Its written by one of the guys on this forum. Good luck and don't lose heart. And, get a new machine!!

our-collective-cpap-wisdom/409/CPAP-Mac ... eper).html

See ya,
Jay

Hi, Tealady, I am a newbie too , I have had a machine for less than 2 weeks. My problem is not he noise of the machine but the noise of the mask leaks. I have Remstar Auto A Flex with Resmed heated humidifer I am using a Flexifit 432 full face mask. Now this is my 2nd one in less that 2 weeks, I am not so sure this mask will do either I have to put it on so tight I have marks on my face in the morning. But after see some of these posts that may just be life. But like you I am glad to find this site to get more info on this new life I now have. My machine is very quiet it makes no noise at all when it is running. I am thankful for that as I don't want to make my hubby have to leave the bed to sleep. I told him when I got my machine that we would have to both adjust if the sound was bad because I was not leaving our bed. But it sure is an adjustment. Like you have have come out of the mask in the night because of the noise or getting to hot. I am not sleeping well with this thing yet. But I guess it is a time thing. So each night I hope it will be better than the night before. Needing more sleep. Guess we can be suffering newbies together.

Tealady....I haven't been here long...but if you have a sleep problem....as they say here..."Pull Up a Chair"......this is the place you want to be. I'm trying to get better and now have hope from steps I have taken and what I have learned from those here.....if you can post your sleep study up here.....you will get some good advice.........

I just replaced my ResMed S8 Escape machine with the Respironics M Series A-flex. The Escape is almost identical to the Elite..except (no data).

I think the M series is quite a bit quieter, even though they are specd about the same....don't know why.

Incidentally, I wear the foam type ear plugs every night......have been for over a year.....just so barking dogs and wild parties in the area don't wake me at night....it has been a real
help with the CPAP treatment. I also use the "Breathrite" strips on my nose.

Good Luck.

Georgio

I also hate the M-Series machines for being so loud.

I negotiated to get an older REMstar machine (which should appear as part of this message, you can click it to see it). The older REMstar machines are much quieter and my wife and I are much more pleased with it.

However, there will always be some noise. Hang in there. Getting your oxygen levels higher throughout the night will benefit your health in many ways. After a while, you can learn to sleep through any noise. It only took me about a week to get used to it. Really, I hardly remember putting on the mask and turning on the machine anymore, and I've only been on therapy since Feb. 08.

Another thing is that if you are getting leaks from around the sides of your mask then it isn't doing its job. You need that air pressure to keep your airway open. Getting the right mask is the hardest part of getting good therapy. My first mask (F&P 431 full face) was very comfortable but the leak rate was higher than it was supposed to be, and insurance wouldn't get me another one until six months had passed. My new full face mask leaks much less, it is a Mirage Quattro Full Face Mask. I miss the "under the chin" fit that F&P masks have, but I can't argue with no leaking in the night!