08-17-2017, 09:25 PM
RE: My spouse is in denial
(08-17-2017, 10:18 AM)readyforsleep Wrote: I have been using nasal pillows for about 7 years. My husband has been very good about it until now. 2 things are going on:
1) I am mouth breathing and have tried the chin strap route, cervical collar, tongue trick, even taping. Still have large leaks. I can't seem to explain to him that leaks are bad and that they defeat the effectiveness of cpap. I am journeying into full face mask territory and he won't accept it.
I just asked my wife, and she says to tell you that if he loves you he will accept that this is something you need to do for your own health and well being.
Quote:2) Because he has seen me fall asleep in the car and I had no apnea he does not think I need cpap anymore.
But you can't tell by watching someone sleep. If you could we would just watch people sleep instead of doing a polysomnography. You need the data! (More on this below).
Quote:He also feels like when I sleep at nite with the machine he doesn't hear me stop breathing etc or gasping for air thus I do not need cpap.
Well then he doesn't understand how CPAP therapy works. Its purpose is not to treat the effects caused by the gasping and the breath-stopping. Its purpose is to prevent or drastically reduce the occurrence of the gasping and breath-stopping. So the fact that he doesn't observe you gasping could instead be evidence that you do indeed need CPAP.
Here's something that might convince him. Look at one of those models they use in biology classes to show how the diaphragm works, like the one in the drawing I've attached at the bottom of this message. You pull down on the rubber sheet that's stretched across the bottom of the glass jar, which lowers the pressure in the cavity around the lungs. Atmospheric pressure then pushes air through the neck of the bottle and into the lungs. Now suppose that the neck of that bottle were too small to let the air into the lungs. You'd need to expand the neck of the bottle, and that is exactly what the CPAP machine does. It expands that neck so that the diaphragm's motion can cause air to flow into the lungs. In a polysomnography they monitor both diaphragm motion and air flow. If the diaphragm moves but the air doesn't flow, then the bottle neck is restricting the flow. Tell hubby that if he wants he can sit there with one hand on your diaphragm and the other near your nose, and do the monitoring himself. Basically he's now trusting his own judgment over the judgment of the medical technicians who used equipment to measure the very same thing.
And here's the thing. If your airway collapses or restricts in any way as you fall from one level of sleep into a deeper level of sleep, your brain can elevate your sleep level back up to that higher level so you can move the throat muscles that allow you to start breathing again, an entirely autonomic process, someone watching and monitoring you will never detect it, but a polysomnography will. And you could be doing it dozens of times per hour or more. Without those deeper levels of sleep that you're deprived of you not only don't get the sleep you need to function properly, you raise the risk of mental illness, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.
And it depletes your sex drive, too! That's a clinical fact. You did say he's an engineer, right?
Quote:You guys know what a journey trying to get the right full face mask is.
When I made the transition to a full face mask I was thinking it would be a journey, too. But it wasn't. I grabbed one that I had in my supplies. This sounds gross, but it was used. It came with the CPAP machine I bought on craigslist. It sat in a box under my bed for a year before I took it out, cleaned it, and tried it. No problems whatsoever. And I had trouble with a nasal mask when I was a newbie and had to switch to pillows! I then had my DME supply me with a different full face mask, and again no problems. I even tried yet another different design and again no significant problems.
Sleepster
INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.
INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.
