CPAP Virgin - Rough First Night

Sounds like you are doing great and you've gotten a lot of good advice.

The only thing I have to add is that if you can learn to sleep with your tongue planted firmly on the roof of your mouth, it will help seal off your mouth from the rest of the airway and stop the mouth from filling up with air. That should solve the problem. It's not as hard as it sounds to learn to sleep that way--practice all day long.

apneawho wrote: I have a ResMed unit and climate line and have not experienced water condensation or rain out yet.

Thanks for your response. I saw the "climate line," and just looked that up. Looks to be a good feature, but don't think it works with my machine.

apneawho wrote:The tape I use is Nexcare paper tape. Available at Walgreens, WalMart and Amazon.com. Others use blue painters tape. I read someone uses thin coat of Milk of Mag around outside of mouth before taping up. Maybe that would help you as well.

Thanks! Will try the painter's tape.

apneawho wrote:When I mentioned the leak, I don't mean so much the mask fit indicator on your machine, but the leak data recorded on your smart card. Do you have that?

Ah, got it. It shows Large Leak = 0%. I don't have my reader software yet, so this is all the info I have on that for now.

Pugsy wrote:Welcome to the forum.

Moisture from our own exhaled breath will form in the pillows and go right back into the nose. If you use a hose management system and route stuff over your head then the moisture in the pillows will only flow downhill....right back into your nose. It isn't enough to hurt you but it is annoying. Already I have had some of that moisture fly out the vent holes and come back down on my face in a little cold spray.

That's a good point.

Pugsy wrote:If you want to continue using the Swift FX (I use it too) then you may want to think about a barrel cozy or even 2 of them at once if you still get much condensation in your nasal pillows that goes into your nose. Might also want to wrap a little fleece around that short hose from the long hose to the mask.I use them. My body needs the added moisture from the humidifier and lowering the setting is not an option I want to do. The dryness in my nasal mucosa is much more of a problem than snorting a little water. Moisture needs are highly individual and you have to figure out what works best for you.

Another good suggestion. Thanks! I just went over and ordered a barrel cozy and short tube cozy.

Pugsy wrote:And yes, you will feel like you have been run over till you get things settled in and your get your AHI down. I had the same thing happen to me when I first started. AHI of 8 to 10 and I know that is hugely less than pre cpap 53/hr but it is still enough to make me feel like total crap. It took me a couple of weeks to get leaks under control and pressures optimized so that the AHI got down below 5.

All the success stories are sure giving me a lot of encouragement.

Pugsy wrote:So let's get you some software and see your reports and go from there. I suspect your minimum is not quite where it needs to be to be able to handle the events. Probably only need just a little more minimum. I had the same thing happen to me.

The sleep doc said the same thing. The titration test was stopped before they reached the optimum. She wanted it to go a bit higher.

Pugsy wrote:For more information about Pro (hint, hint ) just send me a private message. SleepyHead is actually very stable for being still young in its design. Decide which way you want to go on the software and let me know. I am pretty good with software stuff and I use all those offerings so I can help with pretty much any of them.

Cool! Will do the private message. I'm a machine geek and ordered the software as soon as I found out which machine I was getting. Before I got sick, I was a scientist in charge of a lot of complex machines. Fun! I taught everyone how to use them and did the more complex troubleshooting and maintenance.

Pugsy wrote:Edit....you have ordered the software...Encore Viewer? Okay...you might want to give SleepyHead a try then.
BTW your computer...what operating system is it and is it 32 or 64 bit computer?

SleepyHead sounds very interesting! Both my computers are 64-bit, but my netbook is 32-bit, so will be able to copy the Encore Viewer 2.0 software over and SleepHead, if needed.

Janknitz wrote:Sounds like you are doing great and you've gotten a lot of good advice.

The only thing I have to add is that if you can learn to sleep with your tongue planted firmly on the roof of your mouth, it will help seal off your mouth from the rest of the airway and stop the mouth from filling up with air. That should solve the problem. It's not as hard as it sounds to learn to sleep that way--practice all day long.

Thanks for the hint. I actually do that nearly all the time naturally. It just seems that the pressure gets by my tongue, when I'm falling asleep. I must relax it slightly, even though it feels like it's still up there on the roof of my mouth.

keep in mind that seeing as she (the doc) wants it to go higher... see if she'll go for a bipap/auto bipap... the machine that you have will only go up to 20... a bipap will go higher and will be easier to breathe against.

I so surprised the username Grouch hadn't already been taken

Welcome to the forum

cflame1 wrote:keep in mind that seeing as she (the doc) wants it to go higher... see if she'll go for a bipap/auto bipap... the machine that you have will only go up to 20... a bipap will go higher and will be easier to breathe against.

Thanks for that. I just downloaded SleepyHead and it looks at first glance that the machine wasn't hitting the pressure limits. The average looked to be just over 15 cm, so there still is a bit of play left.

Uncle_Bob wrote:I so surprised the username Grouch hadn't already been taken

Easily explainable. They were saving it for me.

Uncle_Bob wrote:Welcome to the forum

Thanks! Not only is this is a very informative place, it's also very friendly.

Wishing you a better night tonight Grouch!

apneawho wrote:Wishing you a better night tonight Grouch!

Why, thank you very much! I'm hoping for one. Actually, I think it will be better, now that I have all the information everyone has shared. Plus, I have some coping tips I developed last night. Plus, I'm pretty tired from the lack of sleep, so think I'll probably sleep better tonight.

You have a great attitude. That is half the battle.