RE: The Big Day
I'm Canadian and don't understand the politics of dealing with this DME animal you have in the US. However, I think your main objective at this point should be to get the best machine you can. You say your doctor gave you a prescription for an "autotitrating CPAP set to CPAP @ 6 cm H2O." That is a good start, not the CPAP at 6 cm, but the Autotitrating part. That means a machine that can adjust the pressure, not a fixed pressure CPAP. In that category I would suggest doing your best to get the ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet For Her. It gives you the most options for treatment down the road. The "For Her" model is a nice to have, not essential. It just gives you more setup options. It does everything the standard model does as well.
As far as setting it up, I would disregard the suggestion to put it in CPAP mode. Simple put in AutoSet mode with a 6 cm minimum. The maximum can be left at the default 20 or set to 15, whatever you prefer. Keep in mind it is unlikely to go anywhere near that pressure. All you need to do over the first few days is see where the machine wants to take the pressure and what you get for event flags. Then you can refine the settings. No need to do any kind of manual titration of pressures. The SleepyHead charts will tell you what pressure you really need.
I would discourage the idea of starting at 5 cm and increasing 0.2 per day. 5 cm for most people is too low a pressure and it can give you a suffocating feeling. No need to torture yourself with that. 6 cm is an OK minimum but with experience you may find you want it even a bit higher.
Hope that helps some. Good luck!
As far as setting it up, I would disregard the suggestion to put it in CPAP mode. Simple put in AutoSet mode with a 6 cm minimum. The maximum can be left at the default 20 or set to 15, whatever you prefer. Keep in mind it is unlikely to go anywhere near that pressure. All you need to do over the first few days is see where the machine wants to take the pressure and what you get for event flags. Then you can refine the settings. No need to do any kind of manual titration of pressures. The SleepyHead charts will tell you what pressure you really need.
I would discourage the idea of starting at 5 cm and increasing 0.2 per day. 5 cm for most people is too low a pressure and it can give you a suffocating feeling. No need to torture yourself with that. 6 cm is an OK minimum but with experience you may find you want it even a bit higher.
Hope that helps some. Good luck!
