dreaming

For a few reasons I was not on the bipap last night. I was dreaming about my grandparents. Does the fact that I dreamed (and remember that I dreamed) necessarily mean that I had the chance to go into deeper sleep and therefore had fewer apneas?

Thanks,
Grace

Just for clarification were you on CPAP and not Bi-PAP or were you on neither?

I'm on bipap, just didn't use it last night because I had a lot of air in my stomach.

As I understand it, you only remember a dream if you awake during the dream. Most likely you had an apnea while dreaming, the apnea woke you up enough to remember the dream.

Brenda

Oh poop.

However, I've heard that not dreaming is a sign of not being able to go into deep sleep... so did I at least get that far into my sleeping stages?

Yep, you got that far. But had you been using the machine you may have gotten better, longer sleep.
Not dreaming just means you don't remember it...meaning you slept right thru it.

Brenda

I was diagnosed with severe OSA -- AHI of 74, and have just begun xPAP therapy.

I used to dream all the time while untreated...

Dreaming looked very different for me at different points in my life. Remembering vivid intricate dreams was fairly common. I think any time one wakes up by an alarm clock there's a chance of being awakened during REM, so remembering a dream would be expected from time to time. When awakened during a dream and not by an alarm clock or other stimuli, then the whys would come to mind.

I've read that while the more involved dreams occur during REM, dreaming can happen in any stage of sleep. Then there are those with sleep disorders who experience dreamlike scenes when entering sleep or during awakening, but they are considered hallucinations. When my sleep disruption was at its worst, I was having "dreams" as I slipped in and out of dozing. There was some confusion in my brain over what was real and what was a dream. I would be in the middle of a conversation and slip into one of these scenes, then hear myself say out loud a line in the scene. I would immediately say,"No,no" because I knew it was not supposed to be a part of the conversation, and that would usually snap me out of it.

Just saying that I think normal dreaming patterns and those of a sleep deprived brain can look very different. Add other variables, and I don't think I'd place too much stock in an occasional occurence having much interpretive or diagnostic value. A pattern could be meaningful. I had a pattern of remembering dreams that had a common theme of smothering, choking, drowning, or otherwise not breathing. Haven't had one since I got my OSA treatment at a therapeutic level, so it stands to reason that these were prompted by apnea events that awakened me. But gee, it's all so subjective, isn't it?

Kathy