This Old Guy Laments

[harmon k]

Hi. I'll preface this by saying I'm elderly, probably old enough to be the father or grandfather to most of you. But I'm very active, exercise daily, go out a lot, etc. The reason I mention that I'm a senior is that I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't have a smartphone, I'm not on Facebook, or any of these "modern" things haha. But mostly embarrassed that I'm pretty much a computer-illiterate person compared to you guys........I mean, I can go online, email friends and especially am blessed to have found you and this site. But when it comes to anything like "downloading" or doing more involved things on a computer well, I'm in the stone age ha.
I'm bringing all this up because everyone here says you HAVE to download Sleepyhead or a similar thing to truly know if your treatment is going well. That's beyond me. I go to Resmed/MyAir daily and it tells me #of daily events, my leak rate and # of mask on/off times. But people here say that that is basically useless info, and I'm not sure why.
I've been using cpap religiously for 3 months and am just now starting to feel a little improvement in the daytime. It makes me real optimistic now (knock wood).
I like my sleep doc/neurologist a lot. Whenever I've seen him, about every 5 weeks, he is so nice and spends about an hour and a half with me.

I just went last week and his secretary downloaded my card before I saw him and he looked at everything and said all is good.

I know from my machine that my "events" are always between 0 and 1.
The thing I've seen change in just the last week is that I used to get up to urinate about 4 times a night and now it's 1 or 2 times. Hope that's meaningful based on info you nice people have talked about. Thanks for you time and Happy holidays to you all.

[Sleeprider]

Harmon, no need to be a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out. You have been helpful to a number of people here, and hopefully you have gotten some benefit that has worked for you. When all else fails, if you feel better, chances are you are doing better. I know I rely on data to help point to how to best help someone. Without data, it's kind of like the optometrist flipping lenses and asking better here, or here? A or B? CPAP isn't much different, but we do have some tools that makes it easier, especially since we are meeting on an internet forum.

After 3-months you are getting some benefits. The night-time bathroom trips (nocturia) are a common side-effect of sleep apnea. https://www.google.com/search?q=nocturia...8&oe=utf-8 I hope we haven't made you feel out of place for not being a "techie" person. It turns out you're doing it right. Merry Christmas to you.

[Ghost1958]

Hi. I'll preface this by saying I'm elderly, probably old enough to be the father or grandfather to most of you. But I'm very active, exercise daily, go out a lot, etc. The reason I mention that I'm a senior is that I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't have a smartphone, I'm not on Facebook, or any of these "modern" things haha. But mostly embarrassed that I'm pretty much a computer-illiterate person compared to you guys........I mean, I can go online, email friends and especially am blessed to have found you and this site. But when it comes to anything like "downloading" or doing more involved things on a computer well, I'm in the stone age ha.
I'm bringing all this up because everyone here says you HAVE to download Sleepyhead or a similar thing to truly know if your treatment is going well. That's beyond me. I go to Resmed/MyAir daily and it tells me #of daily events, my leak rate and # of mask on/off times. But people here say that that is basically useless info, and I'm not sure why.
I've been using cpap religiously for 3 months and am just now starting to feel a little improvement in the daytime. It makes me real optimistic now (knock wood).
I like my sleep doc/neurologist a lot. Whenever I've seen him, about every 5 weeks, he is so nice and spends about an hour and a half with me.

I just went last week and his secretary downloaded my card before I saw him and he looked at everything and said all is good.

I know from my machine that my "events" are always between 0 and 1.
The thing I've seen change in just the last week is that I used to get up to urinate about 4 times a night and now it's 1 or 2 times. Hope that's meaningful based on info you nice people have talked about. Thanks for you time and Happy holidays to you all.

If your getting 0 to 1 ahi it don't get much better than that.
Sleepy Head isn't hard to download but as long as your feeling good with that low ahi, I'd not worry much about it.

[harmon k]

Thanks a lot.

[sonicboom]

harmon - you are doing well. I would add though that AHI is only part of the story although a big part indeed. There are folks who have a very low AHI but have noticed little if any improvement in how they feel if at all.

The true barometer of your treatment is how you feel. If you feel great no need to change anything. If you think you could be doing better then some little changes could be beneficial. Your machine (I use the same one) can give you so much more info than MyAir, info that could effect how you feel. For instance, the A10 reports RERAs - Respiratory Event Related Arousals. These are events that usually are just short of being an apnea or hypopnea (10 or more seconds) yet still arouse the sleeper. So one could have a low AHI but if one had a lot of RERAs and one wasn't feeling well on therapy a good indicator might be high RERAs. MyAir does not report RERAs.

If you ever want to take the plunge and download SleepyHead (you've made it this far on the forum) we can all walk you through it.

Happy holidays.

[Rcgop]

Sounds like you have it under control. Good going.

Hi. I'll preface this by saying I'm elderly, probably old enough to be the father or grandfather to most of you

Don't think you have the honors on being the oldest. I could easily have great grand children. My grand daughter is a junior in college.

[stanleydean]

Hi Harmon,

Seems like we "more mature" members are not as thinly populated as some folks may think. Congratulations on hooking up with the forum early in your CPAP journey, registering a nice low AHI and reducing your nighttime trips to the bathroom by 50%. I'm a little envious about the latter, sometimes I get by with two or three trips but I still have four pretty often. Best wishes for continuing success and for feeling great!

Stan

[player]

It is in your best interest to use Sleepyhead to monitor your therapy.

Find a more computer literate friend / relative to install Sleepy Head and help you with reading your data.

It is as easy as email or posting here once it's set up. (Setting it up is pretty easy as well.)

[harmon k]

Sonicboom, you said that my Airsense 10 machine can give me a lot more info than Resmed/My Air can, like the RERA's. But when I go to the "My Options" part or the "Sleep Report" part and scroll down the whole thing I only see things like ramp time, hum level,warmup (in Options) or, in Sleep Report, things like Days used, total AI, central AI, etc. Thanks.

[Beej]

The sleep report doesn't display breakdown details like:
number, duration and index per hour of obstructive events
number, duration and index per hour of hypopnea events
number, duration and index per hour of central or clear airway events
total time spent in apnea
number of RERAs (respiratory effort related arousals)

Graphs over time of summary and detail events, so patterns may be identified and addressed as needed.

For example, click on this link.