Cape67's Therapy Thread
Guess I will just make a single thread for my therapy questions rather than making new ones.
Hello there, I started on BIPAP back in December 2023 after failing my sleep study miserably. Here is the black box recording of the train wreck. Hard to believe that I was sleeping like this, every night! Wow.
So they prescribed a BIPAP machine for me, but, as many of you also experienced, my insurance decided it would be best to attempt a try-and-fail on regular CPAP first, which may or may not be what some would refer to as (clearing throat) legalized racketeering. I was able to find one machine, after an exhaustive nation-wide search, a surplus refurbished Luna G3 Series Model B25a from a hospital supplier, and buy it for less cash than the copay would have been for a regular CPAP. It was a little risky, and the model wasn't optimal, but I felt I have no other options and so far, it hasn't been too bad. In observation, many times you will see this model referred to as a "G3" but G3 is referring to the CPAP model. However, the G3 B25a refers to the BiPAP variant, for clarity.
Armed with no other clinical or professional support excepting the the excellent advice and support from this forum, I have been able to optimize my settings as time went by. Although at times I feel like I am flying blind with one hand tied behind my back, I soldier on.
I hope that someday OSCAR will support (or at least partially support) this particular model, but I doubt that will ever happen.
I was able to upgrade the firmware of the machine to 1.00.69 from the original 1.00.57 that the machine came with. I also found that upgrading the SD card to a SanDisk Extreme Pro helped a lot, as the machine was struggling to write data, the flow and leak graphs in particular.
I go back and forth with using humidity, and even when it's on, I only have it set to "2" at the most (out of 5.) I never use the heater tube. I have tried the DreamWear full-face mask for about six months, sometimes the transduced whooshing noise from the down-tubes kind of gets to me, and it leaked quite a lot. I then tried the DreamWear nasal pillows, but found that I needed to use a chin-strap and it felt like someone was smothering me, between the headgear apparatus and the strap. I tried a cervical soft collar but kept waking up feeling like someone was strangling me, which set off some kind off odd panic attack type of thing, as best as I can describe it. I suspect that the facial presence of the device triggered a sympathetic response to facial cranial nerve pressure, a primitive survival reflex built into most of us.
As of now, my current concern is with my CA's ("clear airway" or what some apparently call central apneas) which have decided to pay me another unsolicited and unexplained visit. So that is what I am dealing with now.
Current settings
Recent screenshot composite from BMC's PAP Link, since I cannot sadly use OSCAR with the Luna Bipap.
Incidentally, if anyone happens to have any suggestions for dealing with the CA thing, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Hello there, I started on BIPAP back in December 2023 after failing my sleep study miserably. Here is the black box recording of the train wreck. Hard to believe that I was sleeping like this, every night! Wow.
So they prescribed a BIPAP machine for me, but, as many of you also experienced, my insurance decided it would be best to attempt a try-and-fail on regular CPAP first, which may or may not be what some would refer to as (clearing throat) legalized racketeering. I was able to find one machine, after an exhaustive nation-wide search, a surplus refurbished Luna G3 Series Model B25a from a hospital supplier, and buy it for less cash than the copay would have been for a regular CPAP. It was a little risky, and the model wasn't optimal, but I felt I have no other options and so far, it hasn't been too bad. In observation, many times you will see this model referred to as a "G3" but G3 is referring to the CPAP model. However, the G3 B25a refers to the BiPAP variant, for clarity.
Armed with no other clinical or professional support excepting the the excellent advice and support from this forum, I have been able to optimize my settings as time went by. Although at times I feel like I am flying blind with one hand tied behind my back, I soldier on.
I hope that someday OSCAR will support (or at least partially support) this particular model, but I doubt that will ever happen.
I was able to upgrade the firmware of the machine to 1.00.69 from the original 1.00.57 that the machine came with. I also found that upgrading the SD card to a SanDisk Extreme Pro helped a lot, as the machine was struggling to write data, the flow and leak graphs in particular.
I go back and forth with using humidity, and even when it's on, I only have it set to "2" at the most (out of 5.) I never use the heater tube. I have tried the DreamWear full-face mask for about six months, sometimes the transduced whooshing noise from the down-tubes kind of gets to me, and it leaked quite a lot. I then tried the DreamWear nasal pillows, but found that I needed to use a chin-strap and it felt like someone was smothering me, between the headgear apparatus and the strap. I tried a cervical soft collar but kept waking up feeling like someone was strangling me, which set off some kind off odd panic attack type of thing, as best as I can describe it. I suspect that the facial presence of the device triggered a sympathetic response to facial cranial nerve pressure, a primitive survival reflex built into most of us.
As of now, my current concern is with my CA's ("clear airway" or what some apparently call central apneas) which have decided to pay me another unsolicited and unexplained visit. So that is what I am dealing with now.
Current settings
Recent screenshot composite from BMC's PAP Link, since I cannot sadly use OSCAR with the Luna Bipap.
Incidentally, if anyone happens to have any suggestions for dealing with the CA thing, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
