Having trouble... help

Hi I am a 22 year old that started having fatigue problem and woke up with a choking sensation at night, got to the ER one night after having my heart go to an aritmea... got very scared thoght that i was having a heart atack, but doctor told me i was fine and had a good healthy heart... it seemed it was anxiety... after talking medication for this i still felt kind of bad,, went to the doc again and told me to do a sleep study, told me i have moderate sleep apnea! finally got my CPAP.. and prescribed me at 7.5 i think.. but felt it very stong.. they lowered it to .4 , and after having it the first 2 nights,, i felt very strong during the day, making it not difficult to do my tasks sometimes im having trouble to catch my breath when im falling asleep .,, but last night i felt a very wierd sensation on my chest and woke up once again with chocking sensation and coudn't catch my breath.... is this normal??? can someone orientate me and tell me whats wrong? i have 3 nights using my CPAP.......

Hi, well I hope you feel better tonight, but I must tell you that while the MD thought he was helping by turning your pressure down, he really went too far... no one can breathe at 4. It is the machine default low pressure (the high is 20), but most of us just barely get going at 6 and way more have set our machines to ~10. But we can help you adjust things if we know more... see the blue printing under everyone's posts? You can have yours show up automatically whenever you post by going to your member page (see User control panel just above forum on the left) and fill in the full name (with any numbers, etc.) and model of your machine and mask - please write it, vs using icons and save us some trouble.

I agree with Julie. You need to get your pressure back up to the prescribed level. 7.5 is not that high and you WILL get used to it. Soon you will not even feel it, I promise you. It feels high, at first, but just relax and breath normally and soon it will feel normal.

Welcome to the world of hoseheads! Let us know how you feel after a full night at 7.5

Bev

Hey outasync got that same series but in CPAP.... Whats the difference??? what things do i have to know that i should be awre off?

The difference between the Auto and the straight CPAP is that the Auto can be set in a range of pressure from 4-20 and it will adjust as your needs require. A straight CPAP can only be set at one pressure at a time and, hopefully, it will be set at the lowest pressure necessary to address all apneas. Your CPAP should have a ramp feature that will start you out with a lower pressure and ease on up to your prescribed pressure to help you fall asleep. Even so, I wouldn't start the ramp at 4. Most people find it hard to breathe at 4 and the machine cannot respond to your apneas while it is ramping up. Did the DR. set up the ramp feature for you?

Actually he did.... but the company i got it at, were the ones that set it to me .. thats when i tried it out at 7.5 and felt it strong, and they were the ones that lowered the pressure... im thinking that they didnt even realize that i would have trouble breathing! or what were they doing! so I can set up to 7-5 right? and also i do i only need to hit the Ramp button?

do you know if you are having some major leaks?
that might explain it..

"and noone can breath at pressure 4"

well, while that is a low pressure, but tried it and it works great for me: My titrated pressure on my back was around ten,
sleeping on my sides its four or less.. and I have 0.4 ahi with cpap pressure four.

If I were you I would not even bother with the ramp, especially if it is set to start at 4. Yes, you can reset the machine yourself back to 7.5.

Most of us, unless our pressure's really high (e.g. 15+) don't use the ramp at all, but you do need to turn off the feature. Elena dear, we love you and hope you get yourself sorted out, but I don't think in this instance it's that helpful for a newbie to be confused by that advice in the sense that your case is a bit different from the rest of us - no one else (that I've ever heard of) uses 4 as a 'regular' pressure setting.

Alright! im going to set the CPAP back to 7.5 tonight and hopefully i will feel much better tomorrow! realy hope so!! hope these are only little side effects while i adapt to my real pressure !thanks for the advice Elena but in the poligraphy it showed that i needed this pressure but i felt it strong, that was why they set it on the lowest pressure! but as soon as i tried it, i had trouble breathing! hope to do well!!! ill let you guys know tomorrow!

Dominguez1 wrote:Alright! im going to set the CPAP back to 7.5 tonight and hopefully i will feel much better tomorrow! realy hope so!! hope these are only little side effects while i adapt to my real pressure !thanks for the advice Elena but in the poligraphy it showed that i needed this pressure but i felt it strong, that was why they set it on the lowest pressure! but as soon as i tried it, i had trouble breathing! hope to do well!!! ill let you guys know tomorrow!

Sometimes they put the pressure starting at four as a "training wheels" starting point, but if you are suffocating at that, by golly, put it up..
I thought the pressure of four when I started was a gail force wind, and so did my husband.. but everyone is different.... didnt meant to
cause any confusion..
I will bet youll find a perfect number very soon, and feel so much better!

Julie wrote:Most of us, unless our pressure's really high (e.g. 15+) don't use the ramp at all, but you do need to turn off the feature. Elena dear, we love you and hope you get yourself sorted out, but I don't think in this instance it's that helpful for a newbie to be confused by that advice in the sense that your case is a bit different from the rest of us - no one else (that I've ever heard of) uses 4 as a 'regular' pressure setting.

Oh, sorry, I didnt know that four was a weird pressure, because they seem to send all the newbies home with autos set from four to twenty..
I really did not know that nobody else uses a pressure of four, I will keep that in mind.. thanks

If someone does use that pressure, I could sure use a buddy..

I thought it would be important in helping my husband to know how the pressure felt, so I finally put his mask on and set the pressure on 4cms. I found it pretty hard to breathe until I raised it to 6cms. And this was done in a sitting position. My husband found the ramp setting of 9 uncomfortable and after a week preferred his full pressure of 12cm to start. I think settings are set wide open because there's a definite lack of knowledge in the medical community on how apaps should really work. That failure may account for some of the non-compliance we hear about.

That failure may account for some of the non-compliance we hear about.

I bet it accounts for a LOT of the non-compliance.

First because it is hard to breath for many of us at 4, so people feel like they are suffocating in their masks. It's already hard enough to get used to CPAP without a panic-inducing too low pressure.

Secondly, if ramps start at 4 but the final pressure is sigfnificantly higher, it's going to blow the mask right off when the pressure gets high. So newbies, who may have poorly fitted masks (and are often started off in difficult to seal FF masks) are almost guaranteed to have leakage issues they don't know how to deal with in the middle of the night.

Elena, you are the odd duck to have such good results at such a low pressure, but if it's working for you that's great. Your numbers look good. Are you sleeping better and feeling well???

Janknitz wrote:

That failure may account for some of the non-compliance we hear about.

I bet it accounts for a LOT of the non-compliance.

First because it is hard to breath for many of us at 4, so people feel like they are suffocating in their masks. It's already hard enough to get used to CPAP without a panic-inducing too low pressure.

Secondly, if ramps start at 4 but the final pressure is sigfnificantly higher, it's going to blow the mask right off when the pressure gets high. So newbies, who may have poorly fitted masks (and are often started off in difficult to seal FF masks) are almost guaranteed to have leakage issues they don't know how to deal with in the middle of the night.

Elena, you are the odd duck to have such good results at such a low pressure, but if it's working for you that's great. Your numbers look good. Are you sleeping better and feeling well???

I think its a good thing the new s nine auto has that mask fitting feature, because if you adjust your mask at four and then it goes up, youre right,
leak city!
Yes, I guess I am an odd duck.. I had an odd sleep study, and odd titration, and odd experiment results.. I think I kinda got misdiagnosed..
I think maybe some of the leaks I had drove the pressure up and I dont need that much.. I can sleep a lot better with four cm's that is for sure, and
my ahi is practically non existant at four cm.. I tried sleeping on my back at four last night, but only slept ninety minutes, but my ahi was only one
and my leak was under six.. so I think the lower pressures are where Im going to hang out.. but I have more experiments to do... Im in a weird
place where I still feel strange if I sleep with the apap, but I have not given it much time at four cm.. so Ill just stick to that and see what happens..
I think I get better oxi readings if I wear it then if I dont.. but even when I dont, Im always above ninety....
I felt the best with my fifty fifty deal half night on and half off, but I wasnt doing four cm then.. I bet in another month, I will have this whole thing figured out.. and then comes the happy dance! thanks for asking! Maybe I should change my avatar to ODD DUCK?

Hello!! Slept like a baby last night at 7.5!! thanks a lot ouyasync and Julie for the advice!! woke up again like 1 or 2 times i was having a dream, kind of bad one think but wasn't suffocating like yesterday!! but ufff thank god and i woke up with a lot of energy ....... can someone tell me if these stages , when i wake up are when im having the apneas?????