Survived my first night with CPAP, but just barely
Well, night one down. Very restless night, much like in the sleep study. Going by the Respiratory Rate in SleepyHead, I slept maybe 2 1/2 hours tops. Hoping for a better night tonight. A few observations:
1) Still trying to get the CLA temp and humidity right. Setting Climate Control to Auto made it too humid, playing around with it set on manual at 1 or 2. Hose temp was 64, but might bring that up a tick. With warm humid air for some reason I feel like I'm not getting enough air, like the feeling you get when you pull a blanket over your head. Cool air is more refreshing, so I'm trying to set the humidifier at the minimum it would take not to dry me out.
2) Related to the point above, one creeping thought I keep having was that the mask wasn't exhaling right and that I was inhaling my own CO2 right back in. I have a P10, and when I exhale I didn't feel it flowing out of the mask vents in the front. It was a steady whisp of air the whole time. Is that how it's supposed to feel? How do you tell if the vent is blocked?
3) Set the EPR from 2 to 3. EPR is good. Made breathing feel more natural.
4) I found that with the mask off I was prone to taking medium low-effort shallow breaths (1sec inhale, 1sec exhale), and with the mask on I couldn't help but take long deep breaths (3 sec inhale, 3 sec exhale) and that, more than anything else, is what I think kept me up all night. I was way too conscious of my breathing. Couldn't go into auto-pilot and not think about it. Hearing the sound of my mask on inhale/exhale contributed to that as well.
5) It know it's a contradictory thought, but I keep wondering how I'd do with either the pressure turned up or down. One one hand my current setting of 8 makes it hard to breath in a shallower and more relaxed fashion, and on the other it sometimes feels like I'm fighting against resistance when inhaling. The mask seems to fit fine, though, so I'm not sure it has to do with the size of the nasal openings.
6) Good news is that I kept my mouth shut all night without a chin strap. Yay for that. Only time I was tempted to open my mouth was for a big inhale of refreshing cool air, related to points above.
7) On account of the previous points, I'm tempted to switch the machine into APAP mode with a tight range, perhaps 7-9. I might play around tonight setting the CPAP to different pressures to see how it feels to breath with it. Not sure yet.
8) I don't know if it's because the treatment is working super-well or that I never feel in deep enough sleep, but apart from one hypopnea that looks caused by a mask leak (which, thankfully, there were very few of compared to my FFM at the SS), I had ZERO events (apart from some snoring averaging around level 1 on SH)! Hard to believe right out of the gate. For reference, my home study said I had just a few OAs but a hypopnea every 2 minutes correlated with a drop in blood oxygenation. There's the tiny nagging feeling that the home study was mistaken and they never monitored that in the SS (went straight for titration), but the fact that I'm so tired mid-day seems to back up that the home study was onto something. I'm overweight too, but I don't think that's just it.
9) Not sure if this is any known side effect, but I felt hot all night. Maybe because the air was too humid and I was exhaling hot humid air with it being diffused all around my face. I dunno. I was thinking the room was too hot, but when I took the mask off at about 6AM I felt cooler. Ugh.
10) Had to get up to pee twice last night, which is unusual. There's a 33-50% chance of me doing that once around 5AM, so I consider this an anomaly. Another side effect?
11) Am I supposed to hang up my hose to air out after each night or is that only after a weekly washing? Can I just store it in a bin or something during the week?
So yeah, really confused and concerned. Hoping to push through past the weekend but if I keep getting 2 hours of sleep at night I may have to give up during the week as I have a 45 minute highway drive to work and I -cannot- nod off doing 75MPH. Any advice is much appreciated.
1) Still trying to get the CLA temp and humidity right. Setting Climate Control to Auto made it too humid, playing around with it set on manual at 1 or 2. Hose temp was 64, but might bring that up a tick. With warm humid air for some reason I feel like I'm not getting enough air, like the feeling you get when you pull a blanket over your head. Cool air is more refreshing, so I'm trying to set the humidifier at the minimum it would take not to dry me out.
2) Related to the point above, one creeping thought I keep having was that the mask wasn't exhaling right and that I was inhaling my own CO2 right back in. I have a P10, and when I exhale I didn't feel it flowing out of the mask vents in the front. It was a steady whisp of air the whole time. Is that how it's supposed to feel? How do you tell if the vent is blocked?
3) Set the EPR from 2 to 3. EPR is good. Made breathing feel more natural.
4) I found that with the mask off I was prone to taking medium low-effort shallow breaths (1sec inhale, 1sec exhale), and with the mask on I couldn't help but take long deep breaths (3 sec inhale, 3 sec exhale) and that, more than anything else, is what I think kept me up all night. I was way too conscious of my breathing. Couldn't go into auto-pilot and not think about it. Hearing the sound of my mask on inhale/exhale contributed to that as well.
5) It know it's a contradictory thought, but I keep wondering how I'd do with either the pressure turned up or down. One one hand my current setting of 8 makes it hard to breath in a shallower and more relaxed fashion, and on the other it sometimes feels like I'm fighting against resistance when inhaling. The mask seems to fit fine, though, so I'm not sure it has to do with the size of the nasal openings.
6) Good news is that I kept my mouth shut all night without a chin strap. Yay for that. Only time I was tempted to open my mouth was for a big inhale of refreshing cool air, related to points above.
7) On account of the previous points, I'm tempted to switch the machine into APAP mode with a tight range, perhaps 7-9. I might play around tonight setting the CPAP to different pressures to see how it feels to breath with it. Not sure yet.
8) I don't know if it's because the treatment is working super-well or that I never feel in deep enough sleep, but apart from one hypopnea that looks caused by a mask leak (which, thankfully, there were very few of compared to my FFM at the SS), I had ZERO events (apart from some snoring averaging around level 1 on SH)! Hard to believe right out of the gate. For reference, my home study said I had just a few OAs but a hypopnea every 2 minutes correlated with a drop in blood oxygenation. There's the tiny nagging feeling that the home study was mistaken and they never monitored that in the SS (went straight for titration), but the fact that I'm so tired mid-day seems to back up that the home study was onto something. I'm overweight too, but I don't think that's just it.
9) Not sure if this is any known side effect, but I felt hot all night. Maybe because the air was too humid and I was exhaling hot humid air with it being diffused all around my face. I dunno. I was thinking the room was too hot, but when I took the mask off at about 6AM I felt cooler. Ugh.
10) Had to get up to pee twice last night, which is unusual. There's a 33-50% chance of me doing that once around 5AM, so I consider this an anomaly. Another side effect?
11) Am I supposed to hang up my hose to air out after each night or is that only after a weekly washing? Can I just store it in a bin or something during the week?
So yeah, really confused and concerned. Hoping to push through past the weekend but if I keep getting 2 hours of sleep at night I may have to give up during the week as I have a 45 minute highway drive to work and I -cannot- nod off doing 75MPH. Any advice is much appreciated.
![[Image: ax1BseG.png]](http://i.imgur.com/ax1BseG.png)
