08-16-2014, 10:46 PM
Anyone using RESmart Auto-CPAP?
I received my RESmart Auto-CPAP machine a week ago and it has not been a happy experience.
First of all, does anyone have the clinician manual that tells you how to change the settings yourself? If so, I would appreciate it if you could send me a link to the manual.
When I received the machine, is was set for Ramp 10 05 - 05. The first night I used it, after the 10 minute start-up period, it steadily ramped up to 15, the maximum setting. It is an auto CPAP machine, so I thought it was supposed to automatically adjust downward if I stopped breathing and then started breathing again. It never did so. I could blow forcefully out and breathe deeply in, but it just kept blowing and blowing. It blew so hard that I could not force my breath out. I just kept breathing in and in and eventually, I had to exhale forcefully out of my mouth. I shut the machine off to reset it to start and turned it back on and the same thing happened again. One time I looked at the monitor and it showed a setting of 11.1 and the air was flowing so much I couldn't breathe at that level. In any event after about 4 hours of fighting to exhale, I turned the machine off and gave up for the night. The other times the setting was 15.
The next night, a Sunday, i had the same experience, giving up after 3 hours since I had to go to work the next day. My cheeks would puff up with air and I would have to breathe through my mouth to relax. Fortunately, my parter was out of town until the Monday night, so he didn't have to put up with the noise of the wind and switching the machine on and off.
I called the service provider who are a 45 minute drive from my home and on Wednesday, took the machine in. They said the machine must have ramped up because I had stopped breathing. They read the card which I suppose confirmed. They gave me another mask to see if that would help - - one that covered my nose and mouth. (The original one was the prong device.) The new mask was worse. It ramped up the same, but now I was burping constantly, and my abdomen had sharp pains and felt distended. It felt like when I was a kid and would gulp air in order to burp. I suffered for about 3 hours, resetting it about 4 times and then shut the machine down. When i took the mask off, the air just kept blowing like crazy. I thought the machine was supposed to shut down automatically when the mask was removed? My partner said the "wind" and noise from the mask woke him up. He said the machine seemed to be cycling gently when he fell asleep, but he woke up because of the uninterrupted noise later and whining from the mask as I tried to keep catching the new leaks. The mask could not contain the air. The small perforated area could not handle the large volume of air. It seemed like physics to me - - I couldn't breathe in all the air that was being forced into the mask and the perforated area was too small to let the rest of it out. Therefore, the mask leaked like crazy and whined and hissed as I tried to plug the latest leak. Needless to say, I was not getting any sleep during any of this.
Yesterday, I called the supplier and made the 45 minute trip again. This time, they converted the APAP machine to a CPAP machine. They changed the setting to RAMP 45 05 - 11. Last night, the pressure seemed very uneven. Every time I breathed in, the airflow stopped before I had a full breath which kept me awake even before the ramping started. Like before, the pressure was way too high for me. I had all of the same problems of the previous night - - the burping, distended abdomen, overpowering airflow and hissing mask.
Is this normal? The second mask is a ResMed Mirage Quattro full face mask.
I'm really getting tired of taking the 45 minute drives and hope that someone has the self-adjustment manual or can tell me that this is normally how experiences with APAP/CPAP machines start but they magically get better quickly.
Thanks.
First of all, does anyone have the clinician manual that tells you how to change the settings yourself? If so, I would appreciate it if you could send me a link to the manual.
When I received the machine, is was set for Ramp 10 05 - 05. The first night I used it, after the 10 minute start-up period, it steadily ramped up to 15, the maximum setting. It is an auto CPAP machine, so I thought it was supposed to automatically adjust downward if I stopped breathing and then started breathing again. It never did so. I could blow forcefully out and breathe deeply in, but it just kept blowing and blowing. It blew so hard that I could not force my breath out. I just kept breathing in and in and eventually, I had to exhale forcefully out of my mouth. I shut the machine off to reset it to start and turned it back on and the same thing happened again. One time I looked at the monitor and it showed a setting of 11.1 and the air was flowing so much I couldn't breathe at that level. In any event after about 4 hours of fighting to exhale, I turned the machine off and gave up for the night. The other times the setting was 15.
The next night, a Sunday, i had the same experience, giving up after 3 hours since I had to go to work the next day. My cheeks would puff up with air and I would have to breathe through my mouth to relax. Fortunately, my parter was out of town until the Monday night, so he didn't have to put up with the noise of the wind and switching the machine on and off.
I called the service provider who are a 45 minute drive from my home and on Wednesday, took the machine in. They said the machine must have ramped up because I had stopped breathing. They read the card which I suppose confirmed. They gave me another mask to see if that would help - - one that covered my nose and mouth. (The original one was the prong device.) The new mask was worse. It ramped up the same, but now I was burping constantly, and my abdomen had sharp pains and felt distended. It felt like when I was a kid and would gulp air in order to burp. I suffered for about 3 hours, resetting it about 4 times and then shut the machine down. When i took the mask off, the air just kept blowing like crazy. I thought the machine was supposed to shut down automatically when the mask was removed? My partner said the "wind" and noise from the mask woke him up. He said the machine seemed to be cycling gently when he fell asleep, but he woke up because of the uninterrupted noise later and whining from the mask as I tried to keep catching the new leaks. The mask could not contain the air. The small perforated area could not handle the large volume of air. It seemed like physics to me - - I couldn't breathe in all the air that was being forced into the mask and the perforated area was too small to let the rest of it out. Therefore, the mask leaked like crazy and whined and hissed as I tried to plug the latest leak. Needless to say, I was not getting any sleep during any of this.
Yesterday, I called the supplier and made the 45 minute trip again. This time, they converted the APAP machine to a CPAP machine. They changed the setting to RAMP 45 05 - 11. Last night, the pressure seemed very uneven. Every time I breathed in, the airflow stopped before I had a full breath which kept me awake even before the ramping started. Like before, the pressure was way too high for me. I had all of the same problems of the previous night - - the burping, distended abdomen, overpowering airflow and hissing mask.
Is this normal? The second mask is a ResMed Mirage Quattro full face mask.
I'm really getting tired of taking the 45 minute drives and hope that someone has the self-adjustment manual or can tell me that this is normally how experiences with APAP/CPAP machines start but they magically get better quickly.
Thanks.
