CPAPtalk.com

I wrote this long "tribute" to Karen and how you can trust her since you are not dealing with a corporation that doesn't care about the end user, but someone who has apnea herself and a huge heart. I was trying to let everyone know that there is no risk in doing business with such a warm-hearted and down to earth woman like herself. For some strange reason, that post is not on the site. I know Johnny never edits any of our posts out, and I've written others that if he was going to delete any, they would have been the ones. So all I can say is, it goes lost in the sauce somewhere.

Allow me to reiterate, Karen is a lovely, kind-hearted woman. I can honestly say that her purpose in inventing the Pad-A-Cheek straps was not to become a rich woman, but rather because she, as a sufferer of OSA, could relate to not wanting to wear the strap marks all day and wanting something comfortable to make wearing a mask at night more palatable. She has certainly done that with her invention.

I consider it my pleasure to have been able to further the publicity and familiarity with her product to all my friends on this site. When she got in touch with me, I realized this was a win-win situation for everyone. And now, on top of that, I am blessed to have gotten a chance to know Karen and to become one of her friends.

I wish her and her product success. If anyone deserves it, it's her.

I got my Pad-a-Cheeks last night. They are SO amazingly soft! Lori, you'd be proud - I had to do a little "lab-ratting" to get them to work with my F&P FFM because of the design of the mask straps - and I did it successfully!

Karen, these things are SOOOOOO nice. I love them.

Due to the design of the straps on the headgear, I had to figure out how to get the pad-a-cheeks onto the *inner* part of the strap, the part against my face.

Here's how I did it:

I pulled the velcro part of the strap off the headgear, making sure to note EXACTLY where it fell so that I could replace it later. I then undid the strap entirely from the mask. I then folded the velcro end OVER the bottom of the little pad-a-cheek insertion tool and fastened it back onto itself (this keeps the velcro from getting stuck to the inside of the pad-a-cheek during insertion). Then, I pulled the strap through the pad-a-cheek using the tool. Then I undid the velcro from the tool, pulled the strap back through the mask, and refastened it where it originally was on the headgear. You have to bunch the pad-a-cheek up a bit as you're doing all this to keep it out of the way. When you're done, unbunch it as much as possible. It will still be bunched when you're done - I didn't mind that, but if you do, I guess the solution would be cutting it to shorten it (though I'd hate to do that! They're so pretty). With the bunching, there are a few barely-visible lines left on the face in the morning, but they're MUCH better than strap marks and go away in ~20 minutes or so, and so much more comfortable.

I love these things! Thanks, Karen!

CG,

I AM proud of you. You've done a great job making it work for you. Are they not the softest thing to lay your face against at night? Karen really hit it when she came up with these. Glad the word is getting out to all the nice people on this site.