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SkinsFan wrote:Thanks all! Did you notice an improvement right away it did it take a couple weeks?

Have a great day!

The results of my first sleep study in the hospital indicated I had an AHI of 39. That is considered very severe.

My first night on my new machine with the nasal mask showed a single night AHI reading of 14.8. That is a huge improvement, but not near enough. My doc wants that value to be under 5, and has stated it will take a few weeks for me to get acclimated to my machine, and for the machine to get acclimated to me.

He will monitor my results over the next several weeks, and if need be, will have me take a second sleep study with my machine and mask on all night long. If he does a second sleep study, it would be to get more fine tuned data to 'tweak' the parameters of my machine to a more suitable inhale pressure, exhale pressure, and ramp up times as I sleep.

I am encouraged and I am committed to reach my goals.

SkinsFan wrote:Thanks folks. I should hear from insurance this week. Hopefully they approve something that is a good and quiet product.

The full mask scares me a bit, but if I can get decent sleep..will be worth it. (I dread going ti sleep now..worrying about waking up, feel like crap when I get up..headache, chest hurts, just feel awful.

I look forward to learning from you folks and thanks again.

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SkinsFan wrote:Thanks all! Did you notice an improvement right away it did it take a couple weeks?

Have a great day!

Depends...what do you consider an improvement?
Are you wanting total reborn feeling....20 years younger and all that? Or are you happy with a lessening of the general symptoms?

For me nocturia (getting up to pee every hour on the hour with a full bladder) pretty much ceased immediately with optimal therapy along with my killer morning awakening headaches (both are common symptoms of sleep apnea)
BUT
the totally reborn feeling...20 years younger and all that with load of energy and cleaning things that haven't been cleaned in years because of all this new energy .....still waiting on that one.

In all seriousness.....improvement times and degrees of improvement will vary hugely between people.
Some get lucky and find it right away and some people it takes a few weeks or months or even years and some unlucky folks don't see an huge improvement in how they feel for some reason or another. Remember, there are lots of things that can and will affect how we sleep and feel the next day and not everything is caused by sleep apnea and the cpap machine can't fix stuff that is caused by something other than sleep apnea no matter how good of a job it does.

For me nocturia (getting up to pee every hour on the hour with a full bladder) pretty much ceased immediately with optimal therapy along with my killer morning awakening headaches (both are common symptoms of sleep apnea)

Ditto on that front for me as well. For the first time in many years I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. and did not need to take a trip to the bathroom even once before my normal get out of bed time at 6:30 a.m. My "normal" was usually 4 to 5 trips in the night.

But when I did rise for the day, I REALLY had some volume backed up. Wife said it sounded like a horse was relieving itself in the bathroom

Lambeau wrote: Ditto on that front for me as well. For the first time in many years I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. and did not need to take a trip to the bathroom even once before my normal get out of bed time at 6:30 a.m. My "normal" was usually 4 to 5 trips in the night.

I was so happy to see the pee breaks end that if that was the only improvement in things that I ever saw I would still be happy with cpap therapy. That alone helped a lot in my general sleep quality.
I never got any normal sleep cycles at all with the nocturia.
The 2 most marked results were the absence of the killer headaches and the nocturia.
The other stuff was more gradual in the improvement category...very slow to see much of any results and even now if I don't get enough hours of sleep I will "feel" it the next day and my butt will be dragging. I also have a couple of issues unrelated to sleep apnea that mess with how I feel in general.
I do get a bit envious when I read about someone having the overnight miracle though...I have had it happen a few times but not nearly enough to suit me. Just enough to make me greedy and want more.

Pugsy wrote: I was so happy to see the pee breaks end that if that was the only improvement in things that I ever saw I would still be happy with cpap therapy. That alone helped a lot in my general sleep quality.
I never got any normal sleep cycles at all with the nocturia.
The 2 most marked results were the absence of the killer headaches and the nocturia.

Those were the biggies for me too.
Considering how wrecked I was feeling even the first day had a little more "light" to it.

The really big improvements in cognitive ability took about 1-3 months to notice.

But I have never bounced out of bed in the morning with the "Oh what a beautiful morning" attitude in my life and I certainly don't expect to now. When I had severe OSA I did get up earlier with more bounce but that was because my heart was racing from having morning events.

BlackSpinner wrote: But I have never bounced out of bed in the morning with the "Oh what a beautiful morning" attitude in my life and I certainly don't expect to now.

Me neither. Never have been a morning person, ever. I don't expect cpap to work that miracle though it's funny....that's one of the things that people have told me they expected and are disappointed not to achieve...
so I ask "were you ever a morning person" to which they reply..."why no, I just assumed cpap would make me into one"...
and I go off and bang my head against the wall.....again.

SkinsFan wrote:Thanks all! Did you notice an improvement right away it did it take a couple weeks?

Have a great day!

It took about a month for me to really feel the difference.

If I could just sleep the night without tossing and turning waking myself up..would be awesome..

Pugsy wrote:

BlackSpinner wrote: But I have never bounced out of bed in the morning with the "Oh what a beautiful morning" attitude in my life and I certainly don't expect to now.

Me neither. Never have been a morning person, ever. I don't expect cpap to work that miracle though it's funny....that's one of the things that people have told me they expected and are disappointed not to achieve...
so I ask "were you ever a morning person" to which they reply..."why no, I just assumed cpap would make me into one"...
and I go off and bang my head against the wall.....again.

I think that the fact that I have always been a morning person kept me in denial about having sleep apnea for a l-o-n-g time! I used to get up every morning and say something like "Great! - I had a wonderful night! I feel great! Let me tell you all the details about the dreams I had last night!"

The clinical intake notes in my first visit to the sleep lab are a riot to read. The intake person noted all my denials and reassurances as my girlfriend sat silently smiling. Then it was her turn to describe what I looked like and sounded like all night, and how many times she was on the verge of calling 9-1-1! And all the times during the day I would fall asleep in the middle of conversations with her - even when I was the one who was talking!

And of course you can see below what my AHI was when tested.

Now I think I still have a lot of dreams but barely remember much if anything about them by time I sit up and get out of bed. It had not previously been explained to me that detailed dream recall can be a sign of repeated sudden REM sleep interruption.

Regards, Nate

I was never a morning person; but before cpap, I was a morning menace, what with the headaches,
and the shaky feeling that never went away. After noon, I would have KILLED for a nice nap,
but whenever I DID get a chance to nap, I always woke up with a splitting headache and racing heart.
Immediately after starting treatment, the worst symptoms stopped:
No more headaches, nightmares, trip-hammer heartbeat, nearly comatose afternoons, or eating to stay awake at work.
I still do not feel "energized"; I suspect I can no longer distinguish real energy from adrenaline high.
I do find I have the strength to do much more than I felt possible, so maybe it's just perception.

For about the first month after I got going on cpap, I was very sleepy. I just wanted to sleep all the time. It was the first time I could sleep without continually being woken up, it's like my body wanted to catch up. That sleepy feeling passed and then I started noticing I had more energy and wanted to do more things. I started walking and found that for the first time, I could exercise and recover and get stronger. I had always had exercise intolerance before that. My daily headaches faded into just occasional headaches.

It was frustrating at first, I did not like the first masks I tried and it took awhile to get the mask that was comfortable, quiet, had a good seal, and stayed put through the night. In the beginning I got air in my stomach, that went away after awhile. At times I would get frustrated and wonder if I was going to be able to keep at it. I stuck with it because as soon as I relax to fall asleep, my throat shuts off and I can't breathe, and I was ready to put up with whatever it took just to be able to sleep and breathe through the night. Now, I am glad I did.

Thanks for all the replies. Last night another crappy night of being up every hour, waking up heart racing, enough pillows on the bed for 5 people. Tired. Next sleep study with mask its Friday....

SkinsFan wrote:Thanks for all the replies. Last night another crappy night of being up every hour, waking up heart racing, enough pillows on the bed for 5 people. Tired. Next sleep study with mask its Friday....

This sounds familiar. It's frustrating that sleep labs can't do the studies two nights in a row. Hang in there.

Yeah, I guess it's insurance stuff. 5 days to go! For me, once I start waking up (heart racing)--mind takes over and I lay there like a lunatic....left side...right side...more pillows..less pillows. I used to love bedtime....lol
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half the time I end up in the lazy boy to give the wife a break.
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I get a lot done during the day being tired as hell when I wake up, can't imagine having a day fully rested!