GarlicMassage's Therapy Thread

[GarlicMassage]

I would say you do. Thanks for the help!

[GarlicMassage]

Hi I have a new set of data I was wondering if y'all could look at? I haven't been feeling well lately especially last night I woke up around 7am due to apneas. Are there any RERA's you can see either? Just curious if that's something I should be worried about. I have been using a soft cervical neck collar but I'm not sure how much it is helping. Though it doesn't seem to be hurting either. Thanks ahead of time for helping me out!


           

[GarlicMassage]

Hi I was wondering if there was anything in my data that could indicate why I've been feeling so bad after waking up? I will say my sleep outside of the BiPaP has been awful, so I'm just hoping something will help explain my weird schedule and zombie-like feeling upon waking up in the evening. My body naturally shifted to a poly-phasic schedule and I don't know how to make myself sleep through the night or not need a nap. Schedule has been going to bed at 7am, waking up around 11am, then going back to bed at 1pm, finally waking up at 7pm. I then need a nap around 11pm. I believe my acid reflux is contributing to my weird schedule and is what is causing me to wake up in the night. My poor sleep has been going on for about two months and has finally gotten to this point. I have been sleeping in a recliner with a soft cervical neck collar on, and a full face mask. This situation has been pretty miserable so if anyone has any suggestions for that I would greatly appreciate it, though I understand that's not the point of the forum. Thank you for any help you are able to give!

             

[Jay51]

I can relate to sleeping in a recliner.  I used to have some minor GERD.  I moved to the recliner a few years ago because my SPO2 oximetry was much much much better in the recliner than in the bed (and using a soft cervical collar also).  I finally moved back to the bed by purchasing a large 3 foot x 3 foot upper body wedge (keeps my entire upper body from tailbone supported at night for both better sleep and can decrease symptoms of GERD).  Also, getting some furniture risers, etc. and putting them under the head of the bed, can raise the head of the bed to help.  I personally don't know if I will ever return to sleeping flat on my bed (either supine or side laying).  Too scary was the difference in my spo2 numbers (plus some chest pain upon waking up supine in my bed that became more frequent as my sleep apnea progressed).  Keep using the pap also.

[Sleeprider]

I'm impressed that increasing the trigger sensitivity has fully resolved the central apnea issues. There are some sporadic obstructive events that are not unexpected with sleeping upright, but your use of the collar is effective. We can probably clean those up by raising IPAPmax (maximum pressure) to 12.0. This will let your device raise pressure a bit when flow limitation appears ahead of an obstructive event.

The bad news, or good depending on your viewpoint, is that your therapy is very good now. Other than the minor tweak above, I don't see much room for improvement. If you have not done so already, talk to your doctor about your acid reflux and non-circadian sleep schedule. There are medications and therapies for both.

[GarlicMassage]

Woops, I guess I never saw the notification for the last response. Therapy had been going really well when I stopped sleeping in a recliner. But then I tried to solve aerophagia issues that have been affecting me pretty bad lately. On 10/6 pressure I swallow air a lot so I asked my sleep doctor if 9/5 was worth a try and we switched to that. I did that for two weeks but then I started needing two naps a day instead of one and getting bad headaches. I've tried all the non pressure change fixes that the wiki recommends and nothing really helps. Any advice on if it's possible for me to change pressure to fix aerophagia? First two pictures are on 9/5 the last one was from last night. I had to change pressure halfway through the night from 10/5.4 back to 10/6 because I woke up with a headache.

           

[Sleeprider]

Any reason you're using VPAP S (fixed pressure), rather than Vauto (auto-pressure)?

[GarlicMassage]

Not that I know of. I don't believe I've ever messed with that. Should I be using Vauto?

Edit: Apparently my machine was first in Vauto but changed within a month of therapy. So I'm assuming something I said to the doctor made her think it needed to not be in Vauto. That was so long ago and with such different settings I'm kind of doubting that was the issue.

[GarlicMassage]

Is there anyway to stop these cluster of events that happen after waking up in the morning? It only seems to happen if I wake up within two hours of when I would naturally wake up so around 7am. I'm thinking it's caused by the stage of sleep I'm in when trying to fall back asleep but have no idea how to solve it. Also I'm experiencing a lot of aerophagia from therapy still, is there anything I can do to help that? I've tried all sorts of sleeping positions, I used a soft cervical collar, have used a wedge pillow but am still swallowing enough air that I wake up bloated.