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Perception vs reality - BigEars - 01-25-2015
Last night I thought was a bad one, my recollection was awakening to the sound of my mask whistling, making loud trombone noises and being impossible to seal without restarting the machine.
However when I came to look at sleepyhead everything seems to be not so bad.
I've noticed however that on some nights even when there are few events that the mask pressure creeps up to around 20 and stays there for a while. This seems to be associated with my perception of the seal being blown and general CPAP mayhem. However what I am being wakened by seems to be small beer on the leak rate log.
Maybe the message is to look at the figures before deciding whether or not I've had a bad night. I certainly feel fine.
RE: Perception vs reality - surferdude2 - 01-25-2015
There is a school of thought that says once you get your therapy set correctly, quit looking at the data too often. Perhaps once a week or less might be best so long as you're feeling OK. Some of us tend to make perception into reality and create counterfeit problems that have no solution. That's especially true when you consider that you can't ever be sure when/if you are actually asleep and even worse can you be sure you didn't dream some of that?
RE: Perception vs reality - PaytonA - 01-25-2015
Big Ears,
I had a night that was kind of like what you describe last night. I was awakened at about 4 in the morning with my mask leaking badly. I worked on it and could not get the leaks stopped. Shut down, took the mask off, and went to the bathroom. When I put the mask back on, no fiddling, no leaks. Slept on for a while and then woke up and spent some time just relaxing in bed with the mask on.
I expected both my leaks and my AHI to look bad. My AHI was 0.27 and my 95% leakage was 0. Not at all what I expected. I'll take it anyway, and I do feel fine. I guess this is the difference between measured results and perceived results. I think I will go back to bed and sleep on this.
Best Regards,
PaytonA
RE: Perception vs reality - cant_sleep_in_nj - 01-25-2015
IMO, a lot of people here obsess over the numbers making it tougher on them. Dont sweat it if you feel good
RE: Perception vs reality - Mr. Van Winkle - 01-25-2015
I do look at myAir everyday (mainly because it easy and gives me a quick look at what went on that night). I've only downloaded from the sd card twice so I could check out the Sleepyhead / Resmed software .
I really don't want to get that caught up with the numbers when I feel so good with the treatment.
I too have noticed some of the night's I thought would have been a disaster actually turned out to have good AHI numbers.
For me it seems to be more of how well I get my mask to fit so the leaking don't wake me, because I can tell using this therapy is helping me, It's the best I've been sleeping in years so I don't really care what the numbers are, I will admit it's a good tool to use when you are having trouble and in my eye's with the good help of the folks on this board you won't need to wait so long to get help, some of my appoints would be 3- 4 weeks out which is terrible went your having sleep troubles!
RE: Perception vs reality - me50 - 01-25-2015
when I first started using a bipap, I watched the data every day to see if it was working better than the S9 auto (the bipap is much more expensive) because if it wasn't helping any more than the auto was, I just didn't want to pay extra for it. As time went by, I would download info once a week and I might look at the overall weekly data or I might not depending on how the week went. As more time went by, I got to the point of not even thinking about doing a download and more often than not, if I think about it or remember, I might download the data monthly. I rarely look at it anymore. It has been 13 months using the bipap and if nothing else, I have the security that if I need a high pressure someday that I have a machine that will go to 25. I have never gotten near 20 yet so I am good to go and in 4 more years, I will hopefully get a new machine with newer technology. Until then, I have the best that was available to treat me 13 months ago.
RE: Perception vs reality - OpalRose - 01-25-2015
Ok, I admit to downloading my info everyday and looking at Sleeyhead and Encore to compare the numbers. Last night was one not one of my better nights. It took me over 2 hours to finally fall asleep after fighting with masks leaks, only to wake up every couple hours. I woke up at 6:00am and felt really tired, so deceided to stay in bed another hour with mask on of course! I figured that my AHI was going to be high anyway, so slept on my back in defiance.
Well after getting up and feeling a little better, I quicky looked over my numbers on sleepyhead. AHI was .4 the lowest ever, leak rates a little higher. No RERAs, no centrals, only hypopaneas. Maybe I should sleep on my back more often...just kidding!
I assume that I will probably stop checking my numbers as much when I feel I am no longer new at this.
:grin:
RE: Perception vs reality - Moriarty - 01-26-2015
I looked at the SD card every morning for about the first 6 months. For the last couple of years though I follow the 7day and 30day averages in the menu of my Respironics Auto.
I find that the averages are good for general tracking because it effectively filters the ups and downs that used to drive me nuts trying to fix.
Now I am strongly of the view that if the 7 day average is less than 5, and I am getting more than 6:30 sleep a night, and I am waking refreshed in the morning then my therapy is working well. (as it turns out, my 7 day average AHI fluctuates from around 0.8 to around 1.8 and back again over about a 2 to 3 week period - I can't figure out what thats about but I don't really care.)
RE: Perception vs reality - archangle - 01-26-2015
Don't assume because you feel good that your therapy is working well. Many people with really bad sleep test results swear they sleep well. We all need to check the results every so often.
If your readings are bad enough, you need to investigate them . The worse the readings, the more you need to watch them and try to fix them.
Don't obsess over small changes in your readings. Some people do spend too much time obsessing over an AHI of 1 vs. 2, for instance.
If you've done all you can to fix your therapy and your numbers are still high, there's no reason to look at the readings too often if you're not doing anything to fix the readings, and if the readings aren't changing over time. Even if your readings are good, it's good to look at them every so often to see if problems develop.
RE: Perception vs reality - me50 - 01-26-2015
My AHI is always great there's something that I don't really understand in their graphs and lately I haven't been sleeping good or I don't feel like I have and so I made an appointment with my respiratory therapist or whatever you call them to look at my machine and the information to see if there needs to be any changes and if it doesn't work then I will call my doctor I just never have learned much about the bi-level yet