09-08-2022, 08:37 PM
Heracles - Therapy Thread
Hi,
It did not took me long to notice that my new girlfriend had sleep apnea. It took us a little while before seeing a doctor who was so convinced by the evidence I collected that he prescribed the CPAP machine right away, without any test in lab or more than the improvised tests and data I had.
One of such data was a video where she is wearing an oxymeter while sleeping.
She starts at 97% and snoring.
She keeps snoring and oxygen drops to 92%.
She then stop snoring and become silent.
Oxygen raises back to 97%
Snoring re-starts and here we go for a second loop.
She had 2 cycles in a 50 seconds video and 7 cycles in a 3 minutes one. That is about 140 incidents per hour!
Thanks to Oscar and all the stuff I learned from this forum and Youtube videos, I started to adjust her therapy.
We started with the For Her algorithm. Unfortunately, she ended up with some poor sessions when the device refused to go any higher than 12 cm. Not sure why because the device did go above 14 a few time before. Anyway, we need a reliable way to ensure she will receive the pressure she needs, so we switched to the regular algorithm in Soft mode and are using that since.
As for the maximum pressure, I saw her above 14 cm a few time, even with the For Her algorithm. I allowed up to 18 with the regular algorithm but it ended too much for her. She was not comfortable and woken up by the pressure. When I lowered the max to 15, she had one terrible session with an AHI over 80 when the CPAP was unable to compensate with enough pressure.
Since that, I configured it at 16 and it looks good. She is confortable and her numbers are good.
For the ramp, she likes to have a strong support from the very moment she puts her mask on. As such we are now up to 9 cm for ramp, configured as automatic. Minimum pressure is 9.6, so I can see clearly when ramp is over and therapy begins. That 9.6 really looks like a minimum because it almost never takes more than 2 minutes before she is above that and never yet she came back in the 9.x.
Despite we got the tube for automatic heat and humidity, she prefers colder air. As such, we are at 21 for temp and 4 for humidity. She got rain drops when we tried 5...
As for EPR, she does not tolerate it. From the very first moment she tried the mask, she described the feeling from the EPR saying that it was not comfortable. I turned EPR off and indeed, she confirmed she was better. I tried once to turn it back On and only 1 cm but No, she asked to turn it Off again.
Now, I noticed what looks like CSR. I know it can be induced by the therapy but I can detect the pattern by listening to her when she does not have her mask. She has fibromyalgia and she frequently stops breathing when awake as a pain-management reaction. What I think is strange is that after a month, the CPAP still did not flagged a single Clear Airway event.
Her terrible session with AHI over 80 was the CSR pattern that stayed forever. Most time, with enough pressure, there can be a cycle or two but soon enough, the pattern disappears or at least, there is no more apnea between two cycles. During that one, she remained in apnea for over 40 minutes in a 2 hour session : one third of the time she was not breathing! Should sleep apnea be a sport, she would be an olympic champion!
So my questions for now are :
Would it be better for her to get used to EPR or if she is better to stay comfortable as she is ?
What should I look in her data to determine if she is having CSR or not ?
Thanks for you input,
It did not took me long to notice that my new girlfriend had sleep apnea. It took us a little while before seeing a doctor who was so convinced by the evidence I collected that he prescribed the CPAP machine right away, without any test in lab or more than the improvised tests and data I had.
One of such data was a video where she is wearing an oxymeter while sleeping.
She starts at 97% and snoring.
She keeps snoring and oxygen drops to 92%.
She then stop snoring and become silent.
Oxygen raises back to 97%
Snoring re-starts and here we go for a second loop.
She had 2 cycles in a 50 seconds video and 7 cycles in a 3 minutes one. That is about 140 incidents per hour!
Thanks to Oscar and all the stuff I learned from this forum and Youtube videos, I started to adjust her therapy.
We started with the For Her algorithm. Unfortunately, she ended up with some poor sessions when the device refused to go any higher than 12 cm. Not sure why because the device did go above 14 a few time before. Anyway, we need a reliable way to ensure she will receive the pressure she needs, so we switched to the regular algorithm in Soft mode and are using that since.
As for the maximum pressure, I saw her above 14 cm a few time, even with the For Her algorithm. I allowed up to 18 with the regular algorithm but it ended too much for her. She was not comfortable and woken up by the pressure. When I lowered the max to 15, she had one terrible session with an AHI over 80 when the CPAP was unable to compensate with enough pressure.
Since that, I configured it at 16 and it looks good. She is confortable and her numbers are good.
For the ramp, she likes to have a strong support from the very moment she puts her mask on. As such we are now up to 9 cm for ramp, configured as automatic. Minimum pressure is 9.6, so I can see clearly when ramp is over and therapy begins. That 9.6 really looks like a minimum because it almost never takes more than 2 minutes before she is above that and never yet she came back in the 9.x.
Despite we got the tube for automatic heat and humidity, she prefers colder air. As such, we are at 21 for temp and 4 for humidity. She got rain drops when we tried 5...
As for EPR, she does not tolerate it. From the very first moment she tried the mask, she described the feeling from the EPR saying that it was not comfortable. I turned EPR off and indeed, she confirmed she was better. I tried once to turn it back On and only 1 cm but No, she asked to turn it Off again.
Now, I noticed what looks like CSR. I know it can be induced by the therapy but I can detect the pattern by listening to her when she does not have her mask. She has fibromyalgia and she frequently stops breathing when awake as a pain-management reaction. What I think is strange is that after a month, the CPAP still did not flagged a single Clear Airway event.
Her terrible session with AHI over 80 was the CSR pattern that stayed forever. Most time, with enough pressure, there can be a cycle or two but soon enough, the pattern disappears or at least, there is no more apnea between two cycles. During that one, she remained in apnea for over 40 minutes in a 2 hour session : one third of the time she was not breathing! Should sleep apnea be a sport, she would be an olympic champion!
So my questions for now are :
Would it be better for her to get used to EPR or if she is better to stay comfortable as she is ?
What should I look in her data to determine if she is having CSR or not ?
Thanks for you input,
