New to forum, not to CPAP

[60srocker]

Hi. I'm a 5 year APAP/CPAP user. I've been steadily gaining weight for 10 years. 5 years ago, I did a sleep study, because I was afraid I was going to die. The nurse agreed, woke me up after an hour, and slapped a mask on me. I was averaging 20 'events' a minute during 'sleep'. As I've gained more weight, I've adjusted from 7 to 10.6. APAP was terrible (every time the pressure changed, I woke up, because the pressure changes lagged behind real-time events), so I've changed both my machines to straight 10.6 CPAP. Below this, I don't sleep well. I still can't sleep on my back.

Which brings up why I'm here. When I'm on my back, I can't exhale, even with the CPAP. This is not because of the pressure, but because my own output pressure forces my soft pallet to shut. My sleep doctor doesn't believe me and is clueless about this. I actually need higher pressure to properly exhale than I need to prevent snoring/blocking when I inhale. I can't even blow my nose anymore, as the pressure to blow causes the passages to become completely blocked.

There's absolutely no way anyone is going to take a laser and fry my pallet and uvula, and I can't find any others that have this problem with the search 'feature' (all forurm search engines suck), so I'm 'reaching out' to see if anyone has any suggestions to improve my lot.

Now I'll return to my guitar and do a some blues riffs.

[Julie]

I think you've been misled - sleeping on your back is the worst position you can use if you have apnea. The only reason they want you to do it during testing is to get a 'bottom line' reading, but should have told you to otherwise not do it, so get more comfortable in some other position. Plus if you're getting congested, maybe turn down, or off, the humidifier, because it's a definite cause of congestion for a lot of people.

[gasp]

Here is a thread where we discussed the Pillar Procedure. Perhaps it's something that could help you?

viewtopic/t35305/Today-107-on-TV-Pillar-Procedure.html

Here is the procedure on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMKFhw5vfdg