1 week with CPAP and still nothing!

Hello , im a new user but can someone help me because i have one week with my cpap but im still not feeling well!! does it take a while to adapt?? i wake up dizzy and during the day its hard to do regular activities, i feel i cant catch my breath... syntom i had before getting my cpap and i also feel kind of tired!

Don't expect instant results!

There are a very rare few who adapt and see results almost instantly however for most people it takes a few months to many months.

Read up on sleep apnea and learn what to expect as your body adapts. People with sleep apnea have compromised sleep habits and you need to re-learn and train your body & mind on how to sleep (get a new routine). You also need to read on something called sleep debt. There is a point usually around 4-6 weeks where you will actually feel worse that before cpap, but its all part of your body adjusting and it does get better as long as you use the machine every time you sleep or take a nap.

Use the search feature to get the help you need.

Happy learning

Not everyone has immediate results. It may take several months until you realize that you are feeling better.

Another factor is that your machine and mask may not be set so that you are getting the best effect from them. They work hard in a titration study to figure out the proper settings and best mask configuration, but your own sleeping conditions, in your own bed, on your own schedule may affect how well the machine and mask are working for you.

That's why you will see so much emphasis here on having a data capable machine. The data can tell if the mask is working for your or leaking too much for you to be getting good therapy, and the data can tell whether or not you are getting good results from your machine.

All machines have "compliance data" that shows the number of hours and nights you use the machine. Your DME is interested in that data, because they have to show that you are using the machine in order to get paid. But only some machines have "efficacy" data, that shows if the machine is being effective for you--meaning your mask is not leaking and the machine is bringing down the number of apnea events (AHI) to well below 5 per hour.

Please take a few minutes to find out what machine you have and what mask and post those. Then we can tell you if your machine is data capable, and how to access that data to see if it's working well for you.

Elephant wrote:Hello , im a new user but can someone help me because i have one week with my cpap but im still not feeling well!! does it take a while to adapt?? i wake up dizzy and during the day its hard to do regular activities, i feel i cant catch my breath... syntom i had before getting my cpap and i also feel kind of tired!

Yup. I can't help you but I can only say that my life is kinda getting out of control since CPAP. I narrowly have avoided a few car collisions, and since, CPAP, I don't remember conversations I've had with my girlfriend the night before And this is still the case after two months of therapy. I think it's because that
before, even if I had "micro-arousals", it's not as bad as being fully awoken severely time a night every time you move around in bed

I don't know what to tell you that's positive, sorry, only that I feel your pain.

I did manage to get an appointment with a "resperaratory techinican", to check my situation out. I just hope an RT isn't the same as a DME tech.

The first time the DME tech came to my house, he spent at the max about 10 minutes "fitting" my Swift FX nasal pillows, while I was sitting in a chair - not lying down, and never said a thing when I attempted to stuff the nasal pillows how entirely into my nostrils (he never explained that this is _not_ how it works). And the tech never checked out how it worked lying down in bed, and whether it still fit both on my back, and also lying on my side.

The company I dealt with is called "New York Home Health Care Equipment". While I understand that they are doing their best, it seems that they just aren't up to date on the xPAP stuff. Pluss, they are based out of Long Island, and I'm in NW Connecticut.

I do think that this is (cash cow or not) a rapidly growing field, so I do understand that these companies are just overwhelmed and don't know much about the actual hardware.

So I guess we have to be patient, or do research on our own and bypass the insurance track.

L

I'm two weeks into CPAP and I'm finding it very difficult to function during the daytime too. I'm having many of your same symptoms. Only difference: Before CPAP, I didn't have any problems with functioning in the daytime---no daytime sleepiness (at all), no excessive tiredness, and occasional moderate pain related to minor arthritis that was worse in damp cold weather.

I do know that I can track my AHI's on my machine. They've been nice and low for the most part---min is 0.2 and max is 1.7. If it weren't for that, I'd be having a much more difficult time sticking with using the CPAP every single night.

I can say that in the last 3 or 4 days, I've gotten up to where I feel mediocre instead of dreadful. I'm happy there's been some improvement, but I still intend on talking to my sleep doctor at my follow up appointment on Oct. 19 about the excessive fatigue and daytime sleepiness and other issues interfering with my daytime functioning.

Good luck.

Everybody is different--some things might change right away, others longer.
Hang in there, kid!

Larry.... your post is the perfect testimony for why it is so important for cpapers to have a fully data capable machine and the software with which to read the data themselves. If you could see your overnight results, you would be able to to narrow down why your events are happening and how often. You would see patterns emerge to your sleep cycles. You would be able to bring those data here for input from the many veteran users with the expertise to advise you. Patient Empowerment is the key to your success with this therapy. You need to take ownership of it and educate yourself on how to adjust things to improve your therapy.

We'd all like to think the doctor or RT will help us, but, truth be told, they are too busy...and are only interested in compliance data to satisfy the insurance company's requirements. We certainly can't be asking them to review our data nightly or even weekly, and waiting until 3 or 6 month is ridiculous if you expect to stay with it and improve.

I wish you the best of luck, and I hope your appointment with the RT brings you some valuable information and an adjustment to your pressure to allow you to sleep better. Keep us posted on your progress!

Please fill in your Profile info (full name & number of machine & mask, plus pressure you're set at) because without it we can't help much. There are various reasons you might not feel well, but we need to start somewhere. Are you using the ramp feature? Is it likely that you have a nasal mask but lose most of the Cpap air out of your mouth when you're sleeping? That's a common biggie and we could help there as well.