Hello and first night on a CPAP

Hi All,

Eric here.

After months of living in a dreamlike daze, thinking I was either clinically depressed or losing my mind, I was diagnosed with apnea after a sleep study. I was having 74.5 apnea events per hour (700 per 6 hours) and had only 15% of the REM sleep i was supposed to be getting. My titration study was just an awful experience. I felt like I was drowning on the machine, but the results suggested it was working to almost completely eliminate my problem. Well I was scared and excited. Scared because I was sure it would be an ordeal to use a cpap, excited because I had the hope of leading a normal life again.

Last night I slept with a remstar unit with c-flex. What a different experience. The mask will require some getting used to, but instead of my typical night of drifting between awake and light sleep, tossing and turning every hour, and waking up exhausted and feeling fully aware of passing 8 hours of time in the bed, I woke only once and essentially had no feeling of the passage of time. I went to sleep, I woke at 7AM, not sleepy. The only time in my memory I have slept like this is when I was drugged by 10mg of Ambien.

I feel so fundamentally different today, that it's difficult to articulate. I hope it's not a delusion.

I am interested in others experiences in that first night/week.

And hi again!

Congrats Eric! I wonder how many others are drugged for nothing?

I think sometimes maybe when we read this forum that everyone has problems, and with that kind of filter in place, I feel rather lucky.

My PSG went fairly well (I slept about as poorly as I normally sleep), and after a several-week wait I got a phone call about doing a titration study. I suppose that went well too. The first part was with a nasal mask, and I felt like it didn't fit well, and that I probably only dropped off for a short while (the tech wouldn't tell me for how long). I was then switched to a FFM, which leaked at first. The tech came back in to adjust it. Sometime after that, I dropped off hard, and slept until they woke me at 5am. I have no idea how long that period was either, but I know that I was deeply asleep when they woke me.

Having heard horror stories about masks and adjusting and everything else, I just worked at breathing deeply and relaxing. I feel lucky because everything just came naturally after that.

Same story when I had a visit from a DME-R/T and got my new machine and mask. The first night didn't go badly, because I was just concentrating on breathing deeply and relaxing. Same thing ever since, and so far everything still seems to be going well.

I haven't had that one "Aha!" moment yet, where I drop right off, sleep for hours, and feel great. But I can certainly feel it knocking on my door.

In another thread, I just mentioned that I had an unusually low b.p. reading (low for me) at my doctor's office this morning. I think this may possibly have been the first tangible evidence that magical things are happening.

Guy

Good for you Eric! Not everyone assimilates that quickly, so I think you are going to be very successful. It took me almost 4 weeks to sleep through the night. There are all kinds of tips here that will make your therapy more "enjoyable". You will probably continue to improve so keep it up!

Guy..."I had an unusually low b.p. reading (low for me) at my doctor's office this morning.." good going, that's the kind of difference you want to see!

Georgio

Eric... just a small comment... looks like you've got a Plus... you're going to want to change it to at least a Pro. Problem is that if you have any problems at all, you'll end up back in the sleep lab or just guessing as to how to fix it.

An M series Plus isn't fully data capable it'll only report how much you've used it (some kind of compliance algorythm)

Can I just ask my doc to swap it out??