+- Apnea Board Forum - CPAP | Sleep Apnea (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums)
+-- Forum: Public Area (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Public-Area)
+--- Forum: Main Apnea Board Forum (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Main-Apnea-Board-Forum)
+--- Thread: Paula's - Therapy Thread (/Thread-Paula-s-Therapy-Thread)
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 11-29-2023
I just realized I cut off the column headings on my spreadsheet. They are, from left to right, AHI, RDI, 95% FL, and 99.5% FL.
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 11-29-2023
And randomly, a bad night thrown into the mix, apparently to keep me from believing that I'm making real progress.
[attachment=56583]
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 11-30-2023
A second not-very-good night. I finally took the mask off because I felt like I was suffocating.
[attachment=56635]
First question. The graph of my flow rate never shows rounded peaks and valleys, even when I'm not registering any flow limitations. Any ideas why that woulc be?
[attachment=56633]
Second question. Any idea what all this crap is after the CA? I'm reasonably certain that it's not due to rolling over.
[attachment=56634]
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 12-06-2023
Here's what all my data collection tells me.
My best AHI is at a fixed pressure of 8.0 with EPR set at 2. This same setting also results in my worst flow limitations (virtually tied with APAP with no EPR). This isn't a surprise because this was the recommendation of the sleep technician after my in-lab study. Clearly he was only looking at AHI, because I think my flow limits at this setting are approaching being alarming.
Central events are almost double with the machine set to APAP with EPR enabled than they are with any other settings, even APAP without EPR. Perversely, these are the settings where my flow limits are the best, but just barely better than at a fixed pressure of 9.0 with EPR set to 2. I'm not saying they're good, just the best that I've been able to achieve.
Tonight I'm going to start five-ish days with fixed pressure set at 8 and EPR set at 3 and see what happens with the flow limits. If anyone thinks that trying a different combination of settings would be more illuminating, I'm open to trying just about anything except APAP.
[attachment=56871]
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - Sleeprider - 12-06-2023
I really think you'd do better with a pressure of 9.0 and EPR at 3, but I have no consistently followed this thread, so that may be a setting already tried. I really like the Aircurve 10 VPAP S for you with a high trigger sensitivity with EPAP 6, IPAP 9 and think that could be a game changer.
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 12-07-2023
Thanks for your response. Because I feel fine and my AHI is within the reference range, I think I'd have a hard time making the case for my insurance to cover the cost of a different machine, and I can't afford to purchase it out of pocket. As I said, I'm pretty sure that Kaiser will be unimpressed that my flow limits are high. I'll go ahead and try 9.0 with EPR set to 3 and give it a five or six night run and see what happens.
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 12-12-2023
So here are my results from five nights (really six nights but the date from one night went missing) with fixed pressure set at 9 and EPR 3. This is the best I've seen in terms of flow limits, but AHI is up from fixed pressure of 8, EPR 2. I feel like this might be a good compromise for me between AHI and Flow Limits, so I may stick here for another week or so and see how it goes.
[attachment=57118]
Also, because I have relatively mild food allergies that cause chest congestion, I'm going to eliminate those two foods from my diet for maybe the next four weeks and see if that makes any difference at all. Y'all can feel sad for me because I'll be eliminating wheat and dairy.
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 12-12-2023
I'm also wondering if anyone can explain for me the difference in what's happening between these two CA events.
Event 1:
[attachment=57119]
Event 2:
[attachment=57120]
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - Crimson Nape - 12-12-2023
My response is purely speculation. Your CA1 image shows normal breathing prior to experiencing a CA. I would be inclined to say this is a brain induced event. CA2 shows some deep breaths prior to experiencing this one. I would call that a possible CO2 washout event.
I find that if I try to breathe like the flow rate graph, I can understand what happened better. Of course, I'm a couple of bubbles out of plumb.
- Red
RE: Paula's - Therapy Thread - paulag1955 - 12-12-2023
Thank you for your input. I understand perfectly what you mean for CA2. Air hunger has been a lifelong problem for me so I sometimes breathe this way even when I'm awake.