Post
by jnk » Tue Aug 28, 2012 3:37 pm
I believe that PAP therapy is easy for some, harder for others, extraordinarily difficult for a number, and absolutely impossible for some.
In fact, I believe that a certain segment of plain-OSA sufferers have a brain that will never, ever let them sleep with plastic and fabric around their head and with pressure in their airway. Some use terms like hyper-sensitive to describe them. It is not their fault. It is how their brain is wired. And they may very well end up doing better with some other version of treatment for dealing with OSA. Comfort features and trying different masks and optimizing pressure and going to bilevel and all that whole nine yards doesn't always solve all the problems for everyone, no matter how hard they try. They may do better with Provent or a MAD or surgery or whatever.
On the other hand, I also believe that an indivdual will never truly know if he is in that category or not until he resolves himself to sleeping all night every night strapped up and pressurized, and does so for several weeks, in order to see if it is possible to win his personal battle of wills with his own brain to convince it that plastic, fabric, and pressure can make it safe to sleep.
I don't think anyone finds people "wimpy" or "lazy," or any other name, when those people are willing to listen to the voices of reason and experience and willing to try things and to put some effort into it. In fact, I think those people are very much admired on this board, and some of those who have had to fight longest and hardest to make PAP work for them have eventually become some of the wisest and most respected members of the forum, and the most helpful to others fighting similar battles.
In contrast, there have also been a few, less common now than maybe they once were, who came to this board after one bad night and called the entire treatment bogus and then refused to try or seriously discuss anything suggested to them. If they couldn't get better sleep their very first night using their very first mask, they held that up as proof that PAP would never work for them and that there was no reason to try anything else. Maybe they were trolls. Maybe not. But sometimes, a little verbal "2X4," or "tough-love" "plain talk," HAS seemed to help turn it around for a few like that, and they have then repeatedly thanked the people who chose to take them on to challenge the beliefs they stubbornly held on to at the time and to do so to their face. The sting of the slap brought them around, apparently. Snoredog sure seemed to save a few that way, and I was amazed to see it.
But I've also seen plain talk seriously hurt people's feelings and drive them away. That is because, unfortunately, we never know what words from which member with which tone may do the most good for any particular newcomer. The drawback of forum help is the lack of the visual and verbal cues that tip us off to how our words are being received. The balancing nice thing about a forum is that a newcomer can, if he has the ability, choose to ignore what he doesn't find helpful and choose to use what he does find helpful from those posters whom he can stomach.
I think the common enemy of us all, and especially those who "give up," is not individual posters' tone or word choice as much as it is the outside medical system that way too often contains less-than-helpful docs and less-than-helpful equipment suppliers. That's enough to discourage anyone even when they aren't feeling brain-dead from years of bad sleep.
I applaud cpap.com for being helpful enough to support a forum like this one so that people can get practical help here from fellow patients even when they have been unable to get that kind of help from the medical people they have paid to be helpful.
As for prayer, I generally limit my discussions of that to PMs instead of public posts. Just my choice. I wouldn't want the atheists to feel unwelcome here, since they deserve good PAP therapy just as much as those of us who pray. Right, chunkyfrog?
