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Check your PM.........I'll help you

Pat

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secret agent girl wrote: . . . 6 hours use; I woke up at around 4, which is not atypical, though a little earlier than usual. After a bathroom trip, I had a hard time falling asleep again, so called it a night. Morning recall is always suspect, but I recollect fewer awakenings than has been usual for me. I don't know if I slept through turning over or turned over less, though I think the later. I think the mask worked well, though it did feel a bit itchy where it lay against my cheeks. I don't feel appreciably better or worse than past mornings. I'm trying to keep busy and distracted this morning, but I keep noticing that my breathing feels "funny" to me. . . .

Six hours is FANTASTIC for a first night!

It is natural that you had a hard time falling back asleep that night. Keep at it, and your brain will learn that, even though you are now getting the greatest sleep of your life, it is OK for it go back to sleep to give you your full 7 or 8 one day.

The fact that your breathing feels funny is a good sign, in my opinion. Your body is resetting its expectations. Changing how we breathe at night does change some aspects of how we breathe when awake. It is a little mysterious, and it felt really weird to me for weeks, but once things balanced out, that feeling went away for me.

secret agent girl wrote:. . . The RT told me that the machine should shut itself off within 7-8 seconds of taking off the mask, but it didn't do that . . .

RT forgot to turn smart-start on in the menu.

secret agent girl wrote: . . . I read for a while with the mask on - to acclimate myself - and the machine didn't like my breathing, so it kept increasing the pressure. Is there a ramp feature? If so, how do I turn it on? . . .

"Settle" is what ramp is called in ResMed autos because the machine settles, or stays, at the minimum pressure for a certain amount of time, as chosen in the menu.

secret agent girl wrote:
press 15.4
leak 0.00 L/s
AHI 9.0
AI 1.8
HI 7.2

Your leak looks great, if the RT selected the right setting for the mask you are using.

The pressure is your 95th centile pressure, the level of pressure you were at or below for 95% of the night. Yeah, I know, it takes the brain a while to wrap around that concept--at least it took me a while. But it is a way to give you one number that gives you more information than knowing the max or the average.

You will eventually want to get that AI below 1.0. That may happen on its own as you get used to the therapy. If it doesn't within a few weeks, a wee bit more pressure may do the trick.

Max settling is the longest you can set your machine to settle, or stay at the minimum pressure when starting the night.

H3i is your humidifier.

Tell secret agent boy he should be proud of you.

jeff

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secret agent girl wrote:
press 15.4
leak 0.00 L/s
AHI 9.0
AI 1.8
HI 7.2

Pretty similar to mine (although my AI is usually more like 2.9) after about two months on the same machine.

jnk wrote: You will eventually want to get that AI below 1.0.

Or you might not. Once you get the software, you might see some scattered "apneas" that are 10-12 seconds long and they might be perfectly natural and not be causing any arousals at all. And without knowing that this is not the case, you might not want to invest yourself in a project to drive them down lower. You might experiment a bit, but not with the notion that your AI needs to be below 1.

jnk wrote:That may happen on its own as you get used to the therapy. If it doesn't within a few weeks, a wee bit more pressure may do the trick.

Or it might make it worse.

jnk wrote:Tell secret agent boy he should be proud of you.

Full agreement here.

Stay with it Secret. It will take a little time. You won't even notice it and one day it will hit you that your feeling better, more rested and not tired throughout the day. I started feeling better then I was getting tired early in the evening and was in bed usually by 9 which is early for me, I even had nights when I was in bed by 8pm. That only lasted a few weeks then I was going to bed later and waking up earlier than normal. Now I make it through the day and am not exhausted and have to drag myself to bed.

It takes time but it will happen. Some of us took longer than others, but it will happen. Just stick with friends and ask questions.

Gerry

secret agent girl wrote:Thanks for the tips and encouragement, Jeff!

- I'll double check the smart-start setting.
- And give myself 10 or 15 minutes of settle (weird term).
- I would have thought leaks per minute (rather than per second) would be a better measurement to report. I guess it doesn't matter since they calculate to hundredths...
- I think the mask setting reads something like 'usual' or 'standard'. Doesn't look like Swift LT is one of the selections--should I set it to one of the other Swift masks?
- A pressure of 15 seems high to me! It's a little worrisome, actually, for some reason. I guess I want to get the detailed report to see more about this.
- I'm a little doubtful about that AI number. I didn't have a single apnea during my full night sleep study, and last night I had almost 11? Does the HI seem too high for my machine and mask?

Secret agent boy is easy to please. Now, I, on the other hand, am feeling cautiously pleased. But this recent tiredness has to get better soonish.

Set your mask setting to "Swift."

15 as a 95th centile is nothing to worry about. It probably wasn't there for long.

Like brain_cloud said, those home-machine estimated "apneas" may not be what would be scored apneas at a sleep lab. (There is no way to know for sure without getting wired up). But, still, if possible, as a general rule, for most, according to people more experienced than I, the goal with a ResMed in treating plain-jane OSA is to shoot for getting AI below 1.0 if you can find a way to do so. Eventually, anyway. If you can't get it that low, though, you just get AI as low as you can while mostly ignoring the HI number. That is not the case with other brands. But it helps to know to ignore HI at first and only judge efficacy when starting out by the AI number--at least it helped me to know that when I was starting out.

Most people find starting out that getting used to the new way of sleeping and keeping leak low is goal enough for the first few weeks. Tweaking therapy is something for down the road when your numbers settle, kind of like how we settle down and settle into bed when we let the machine pressure stay settled at the minimum pressure.

Yes, it is obvious secret agent boy has his hands full.

jeff

jnk wrote:Yes, it is obvious secret agent boy has his hands full.

...In which case he hops a plane, bound for a faraway continent, to consult with no other than secret Asian man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iaR3WO71j4

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Congratulations on diligently working all the up-front challenges, secret agent girl!

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"Stopping Treatment . . . If your clinician has enabled SmartStart, simply remove your mask and treatment will
end."

That is the way it should work, according to page 5 of http://www.resmed.com/us/assets/documen ... er_eng.pdf

You might try toggling the selection to "off" then toggling it "on" again.

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