Bad at Breathing

[Jay51]

Thank you for that Deborah.  Like Deborah says, if you only had one CA on your sleep study, then these CA's are treatment emergent.

[Haldir]

Thank you all for the help.  I'll keep going and see if things settle down after a few days.  I know on my mask I have 30 days to try it out or they'll send me another one.  I don't know if that applies to the machine since I was prescribed APAP.  I'll definitely give your thread a read!  I'm also including a link to a great thread I read yesterday after your suggestions.  This is more for myself so I can find it again:
https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread...imitations

[Haldir]

I've attached yesterday's results.  I got a nap (Lucky me!) when I still had my min at 7 and max at 11.  For the night I had the settings at min 8 and max 10.  I figured it always wants to drive me higher so I'd start it at 8 which is still comfortable enough to fall asleep with EPR 3.  With the max at 10 I feel less aerophagia (still a little, but much better than yesterday).  Somehow I feel more rested this morning than usual.  That could be because I got a nap yesterday and slept a little longer?

   

[Haldir]

I talked to my DME today because they wanted to setup initial replacement supplies.  I told them how I had been feeling.   They scolded me for touching my settings (I don't much care because my insurance let me purchase it outright with no compliance period).  After that was out of the way and I got nowhere trying to describe flow limitation they recommended I try a nasal mask.  They'll send me one to try and I get to keep the old full face mask because I'm still in my first 30 days.  

I figure I'll try it and hope for a miracle.  If I pull my nostrils apart and hold them open, I can breathe through my nose, but un-learning nearly 40 years of mouth breathing seems unlikely.  They said this would help with the aerophagia.  I'll look through the options and let them send me one to try.

[Deborah K.]

For tonight set your upper pressure limit to 9.  Let's see if that stops the aerophagia.  

I do think that you need a ResMed AirCurve 10 Vauto, the ResMed version of a bi-level machine.  Ask your regular doctor, not a sleep doctor, to prescribe it for you.

I don't see how a nasal mask would help with aerophagia but try it anyway.  My husband uses a nasal mask and likes it.  I use Bleep, a different version of a nasal pillows mask.  We both need to use mouth tape to stop mouth breathing, and we're both comfortable with that.  You may want to try mouth taping too.  I started with a full-face mask and much prefer what I use now.

[Haldir]

I changed the upper pressure max to 9 like you recommended.  The aerophagia feels great this morning!  I barely feel anything.  I've attached the usual plots and another showing my O2 data from my new O2Ring.  I'm not sure it adds much new info, but it entertained me.  Around 3am my dogs heard me moving and wanted to be let out, so that's the 15 min gap there.  I feel a little more tired today, but I didn't sleep as late as I usually do.

I'm able to post my full sleep study results to see if that helps show anything?  Let me know if you have any more ideas.  Maybe I still just need time to adjust to everything.

Thanks!

[Haldir]

Last night I tried using a large mask instead of the medium to see if that would reduce the bruise I'm getting just below the bridge of my nose.  As you might guess, the leak rate got much worse.  It was worth a shot.  Aerophagia is still feeling better but I don't feel rested.  I'll talk to my dr. soon to see what he thinks about a BiPAP.

Is ResMed really bad at picking up RERAs?  Looking through the flow rate my untrained eye seems to pick up several more, but I could be mistaken.

[Deborah K.]

I'm glad that your aerophagia is resolved.  Good for you!    As to Reras, I had some with my AirSense, but none with my AirCurve 10 Vauto.  I imagine yours will go away too with a Vauto.

Not feeling rested may be because you can't use the pressures you need due to aerophagia. I don't know for sure, as I never had aerophagia, but maybe a Vauto would take care of that too because it works differently. I'll PM someone to see if that is so.

[Sleeprider]

You are continuing to experience relatively high flow limitation and CA events. A Resmed Aircurve ## Vauto would provide the pressure support needed to resolve the flow limits and trigger sensitivity to deal with the CA events. In my opinion, you would be more successful optimizing a bilevel.

[Haldir]

Thank you both, I called and have an appointment with my primary doctor next Tuesday.  Hopefully he'll be understanding. As bad as it might feel, should I do a few nights at the prescribed auto pressure to show him how high it goes up?  I haven't let it go that high since the first couple nights when i was using a leaky mask.

I want to be prepared but also not come across like I think I'm smarter than him.  Yay anxiety, my other super power!