Preparing for Kaiser Follow-Up Visit

Tunapalooza wrote:I got off to a bad start with Kaiser (Richmond). At my first appointment, I brought them the SD card from my older machine. It provided an extensive data set showing an AHI above 5. (Not sure how much data is stored, but I had been using that Respironics APAP machine for about three years.) The first thing Kaiser wanted to do was an "at home" sleep study with an Itamar "wristwatch" device without using my machine. I questioned the wisdom of having me go off the machine since it was self-evident from the data I provided that I suffered from sleep apnea.(AHI>5 with treatment = ??? w/o treatment?) They didn't have to believe me when I told them that I had been on a machine for over six years. I decided to be a compliant patient.

Well, my O2 dropped to 81%, I got no REM sleep and I was ill for a couple of days. My AHI was 80-something. The exercise was diagnostically unnecessary and medically unwise in my view. After two lab sleep studies and two different machines, you can see the results above. In contrast with my prior experience, the Kaiser techs seem rather clueless and are just winging it. At my last appointment, I was told that an AHI below 10 was acceptable since my apnea is severe. Perhaps that is true, but I'm not sure that I can take Kaiser's word for it.
Marc