[CPAP] First night with CPAP trying to figure it out on my own in the meantime

[xone]

I'm still waiting for an official sleep study from my sleep dr/insurance but it was taking too long. I've done Wesper home monitoring which shows 15-17 events an hour usually and have had bad symptoms the last several months. Have tested through there several times. 

Two nights ago I borrowed my father's CPAP to try and get some relief and it helped. Yesterday I bought a new resmed airsense 11 off marketplace since I can't wait longer. I'm still going to do the home sleep study through my Dr I was just approved for but that's probably no quicker than 3-4 weeks away to getting a cpap through them.

For this machine last night I set it to 7-20 and turned ramp off and humidity auto. EPR was on ramp only so with ramp off I guess that means it was essentially off.

Using a resmed f40 hybrid mask. Took a while to fall asleep initially and got up a couple times. I definitely feel a bit better using it but still wake up with a bit of headache and definitely dry mouth. Dry mouth was an issue beforehand and I don't know if I mouth breathe at night or not. Usually have to brush my teeth at least once in the middle of the night when I wake up to pee, still did last night. I would toss and turn a lot and wake up with a scalloped tongue often like I was clenching and pressing it hard against my teeth in my sleep, that seems to have lessened a bit with cpap. 


   

I posted this elsewhere and was advised to try setting min pressure to 9.6, max to 17.2. EPR on at 1 continuous, and keeping ramp off. Does this sound right for next step?

[Deborah K.]

I agree that 9.6 is an ideal starting pressure for you.  Your median pressure is 9.5, so 9.6 is good.

Do turn ramp off.  You get no real treatment with ramp, and any time you return to bed ramp starts again, robbing you of therapy.

I suggest you turn EPR on full time, set at 3.  It may raise your AHI some, but it will make your sleep more comfortable and help control flow limits, a good thing to do.  If you learn that you had lots of CAs in your sleep study, then a different approach may be needed.

Again, welcome, and good luck!  

[xone]

Thanks. I was on the fence about raising EPR that high since I read mixed things about it and it felt a little weird, so I tried 1 last night. I raised humidity by 1 to 5 last night to try to help with dry mouth which it did a little though when I woke up at 4 there was some condensation inside the mask I wiped out before going back to sleep. Not a ton but maybe I need to go back to auto/4. Or not sure if raising the tube temp also would help.