First post after several months reading this forum! :-)
First of all, I wanted to say thank you all for making my journey to getting back my life through CPAP therapy much, much better. This is a truly amazing community.
The TL;DR: What would be the best machine to replace my current Resvent iBreeze C20? I'm thinking about ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet, what do you guys think?
The (very) long post:
(Apologies in advance for my English, I'm not a native speaker and I'm far from being fluent in it)
After struggling with a lot of sleep issues during most of my life, thanks to a sleep study one year ago I finally got diagnosed mild sleep apnea. I was falling asleep at all times, being unable to concentrate, having strong headaches and basically afraid of the time that I had to go to bed because I was getting up even worse than having no sleep at all. All that changed since I got a CPAP machine, and although there are better and worse days now I can at least get some decent sleep and my capacity to concentrate has skyrocketed.
My doctor prescribed me a low pressure (5 cmH2O) that seems to work OK, most days my machine says I'm on 0.7 to 1.4 AHI/hour. My medical provider supplied a Resvent iBreeze C20. I'm using the machine IPR level 3, although I think the pressure release has some delay and sometimes makes my breathing frequency... weird. I use alternatively an ResMed AirFit F20 full face mask and a BMC P2 nasal pillows mask size M, more on this below. I live in Madrid, which most of the time is very dry (min 18% hum to max 47% on a very good day), so my humidity settings go from 6 to 8 (max).
I've got a lot of issues with my nose. It's hard for me to breathe through it normally most of the time, as it always feel either very dry or congested. Nasonex and specially Dymista work well in combination with nasal pillows, as the pillows seem to open up a bit my nose and work better to moist it. But because my jaw relaxes during sleep I have to use a Resmed chin strap that I have to wear pretty tight or I'll leak air through my mouth. The chin strap is uncomfortable and sometimes my jaw hurts and I wake up because of it. Five months ago I got a rhinoplasty and turbinate reduction, but I haven't noticed any improvement. I'm now starting to experiment taping my mouth when using the pillows, but I'm still waking up at least a couple of times per night.
The pillows work OKish, but from time to time I feel overwhelmed, like they're supplying too much air at the wrong time. The full face mask starts feeling more comfortable as it feels more like natural breathing to me, but my nose gets very dry really quick with it, and it kind of blocks. My mouth also gets very dry, to the point of feeling completely numb. I suspect it's because I probably mouth breath with it quite a lot and probably because the moist supplied by the machine is not enough. As a result, I've ended up alternating the full face mask and the pillows.
After reading about some users experiences with the Resvent iBreeze and watching reviews, I suspect it may not be the best machine I can get. As I mentioned, the pressure variation pattern feels weird (it kind of lags), it seems the humidifier is far from perfect, and since a couple of weeks from time to time the air pump makes a high pitched whine that it's a bit disturbing.
I politely asked the hospital nurse in charge of the CPAP therapy about this specific vendor and machine, and she told me they're fine machines, ones of the best one can get. But I remain unconvinced. And her answer here seems like it's going to be hard for me to get my medical supplier to provide a different machine, as I've seen that even with a very detailed medical prescription (like, very concrete model of masks), they tend to fight it off (my BMC mask being one example, where my nurse was recommending an AirFit P10 that they didn't supply to me arguing the model was not under coverage of the insurance).
I don't mind spending money on a good machine, as this is for me a critical life improvement. So after reading about Resmed machines here and in several other sites, I started to think about buying one. But I'm unsure about the specific model I should get, so hence my asking.
Of course, having a machine that supports OSCAR is a big plus for me as well. What do you guys think about this? If you think I'd be better off with a new machine, what would be your recommendation?
Happy to supply as much info as possible. Although Resvent does not support OSCAR, I have access to their iMatrix software and data if that were to be of any help.
Again, thanks a lot for your help!