[Symptoms] Early morning waking a few nights a week driving me crazy

[90day]

Hey there cool cats and kittens, 

By the numbers I have my sleep apnea mostly controlled. I don't have nights with AHI >2. When I get at least 7 hours of sleep I feel great. But a few nights a month to a few nights a week (it varies) I get about 4 hours. I have an extremely high speed technical job and days after a 4 hour night are hell. I know you all can empathize. Waking on those nights tends to be preceded by what the machine flags as obstructive or sometimes central/ca events. When I wake up it feels uncomfortable to breathe, kinda short of breath, and even though I'm really tired I can't fall back asleep. 

I'm not sure the best way to present the data, screenshots from last night are attached. If I can present these data another way e.g. uploading the extract that works too. Obviously I'm having some leak issues, I wake up with some drool so assuming maybe mouth breathing and have a chinstrap arriving tomorrow. I have a screenshot of the whole night, and the 3 events before I'm awake for good at 4:02 (the periods after that I'm awake trying to go back to sleep).

Could this be explained by the high leak rate? Or is my pressure range maybe in need of adjustment?

Your help is greatly appreciated to say the least. Thank you.

[SarcasticDave94]

Welcome to Apnea Board.

For OSCAR graphs, I'll point you to the chart organization wiki accessible via the link in my signature. It will suggest turning the pie chart and calendar off along with a standard chart view.

For a bit of history, do you have a detailed copy of your PSG/sleep study? If yes, post all pages here with it redacted of personal info. If you don't have this, it's advisable to get this from the doctor that prescribed the CPAP machine. You'll be better off if you have this on hand in your personal health file. The reason for the history is to see which flavor of CA events you're dealing with. I think that if you're rather new to CPAP, it's likely to be treatment emergent.

Treatment emergent CA is due to the respiratory flow enhancement CPAP creates that your body is not accustomed to, and it's better flow washes out C02. This in turn causes the brain to misinterpret the skewed too low C02 level as not requiring a breath yet. In cases like this, we try to keep pressure swings to a minimum if possible. This treatment emergent status normally clears up between 1-3 months.

As you are aware, there's some leaks to address via either control of mouth leaks and/or the chin strap. Leaks may also require more attention to the mask fit and adjustment. Mask fit meaning the cushion size, and adjustment meaning the straps. Sometimes, a soft cervical collar assists with chin tucking, which may affect mouth leaks and reduce chin tuck if it occurs.

Read the chart link and the mask link to see if you glean any useful to you info. Post a single standard chart tomorrow and let's see how things are lining up as a trend.

Others will chime in as well on things I may have missed. Best to ya.