CPAP users - any tips?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I had a sleep study done last week and was sent home with a CPAP machine (no big surprise given I wake up gasping multiple times per night). I’m finding the mask frustrating to say the least. There are leaks every time I move and waking up with headaches (I feel like the pressure in my head goes up and down) are my two biggest complaints at the moment.

I will keep at it and I hear you do get used to it. Right? Please someone say they got used to their mask and love it now. Or at least don’t want to fling it out the window in frustration anymore.

I’m going back to bed to try again.

:frowning:

2

The first time I ever wore one I slept like a baby and woke up feeling better than ever.

You’ll get used to it.

3

Two hours into the sleep study they woke me up to put me on a CPAP and that night I slept like I hadn’t slept for years. It was wonderful. The next morning I went to be fitted for a machine/mask to take home and slept okay the first night, crummy the second and tonight, night six, it’s 2:30 a.m. and here I am, not sleeping at all.

I’ll be a much happier camper once I get used to it. How long have you had yours, Zebra? Do you use it every night?

4

I had to fight mine for a long time to get used to it. Originally the pressure was set too high for me to sleep at all. It took several trips to the cpap office to finally convince them to lower it. It also took a lot of trial and error on the mask adjustment too.

Once my (mind? body?) accepted the feel of the mask on my face I began to sleep better. Mine wasn’t the “wonderful-sleep-the-first-night” story you frequently hear. It took many weeks of trying, interspersed with periods of frustration and giving up on the machine. I tried a variety of hardware (masks, pillows) and eventually settled on the mask, as it stayed put better than the nasal pillows (also had problems with mouth falling open at night).

A final encouragement, based on my experience. If you have allergy-related problems, it’s likely they will improve quite a bit. You’ll be spending about a third of your life breathing filtered, moist, temp-controlled air from now on. In my case it made a huge difference.

Best of luck to you. Feel free to ask us any questions you like.

Also, you might try this forum. They’ve had some useful advice for me in the past.

5

I had a horrible time at first. I’d actually wake up with the mask completely off my face because I’d pulled it off in my sleep. It took me a couple of weeks to learn to keep my mouth closed and to get used to having the mask on my face. But after that it was smooth sailing.

6

What type of mask are you using? Full face mask? Nose only? People definitely have preferences. I use a full face mask. There are multiple ways to adjust mine. The tension of the straps is one way. There’s also a dial that brings the head brace in closer or out farther. Slight adjustments make a big difference in terms of leaks.

7

I tried many masks before finding this. It’s light and fits well.
Unless you have trouble breathing through your nose, or your mouth doesn’t stay closed when you sleep, it’s great.

8

It took me about a week to notice the benefits. It took me about a month to get to the point where it wasn’t bothering me at night.

Now my happy-fun-sleep-machine and I are inseparable.

I use nose pillows (see picnurse’s link) To me they have the least bulk. The trick was my eventual learning to sleep with my mouth closed.

9

Thanks everyone for the encouragement. I went back to bed, put it on and slept for a few hours. I took it off around 6:30 a.m., then fell back asleep for a few hours without it. Frankly, all of the on-off of the mask is keeping me up more often and longer than I ever noticed the apnea ever did. But, as everyone says, I’m hoping that gets better.

Thanks for the link, pullin. I’ve bookmarked it and will poke around there later today!

I have a full face mask due to alternating between nose and mouth breathing although I see you can use a chin strap with the nose pillow mask and that looks all-around more comfortable to me. I guess it will be a ‘see how this goes’ with the full face mask for a month first.

I am slightly more rational about the whole thing during daylight hours. In the middle of the night I’m just frustrated and tired.

10

That’s what I’m hoping for eventually so glad to hear there is hope!

11

Sigh. It always seems to be the people who go for a sleep study and get sent home with a machine the next morning who have the most troubles. The cynic in me thinks that the outfits that do this are really just in the business of selling CPAP machines, rather than actually helping people’s lives.

Just my opinion there - some sleep centers that operate like this may be excellent, but normally, the process is to go have the worst night’s sleep of your life, wait a couple of weeks for a follow-up visit with your sleep doctor and get it all explained, then set up an appointment to either go to, or have the DME (Durable Medical Equipment vendor) come to your home to set up the equipment, teach you about it, go over the maintenance and cleaning, etc. If they take much less than an hour or so for this, you’re getting short-changed.

It took three tries before I wound up with a mask I could tolerate. (Swift FX nasal pillows) Fit is critical - if you have to crank down on the straps, it’s the wrong mask for your face. Perversely, most of the new designs use the air pressure from the machine to inflate the seal, and if the thing is too tight, the seal can’t inflate and you leak. If your DME is even halfway decent, they understand all of the tortures you’ll have in the first month or so, and will work with you on getting a mask you can live and sleep with.

If you’re a mouth-breather at night, you’re pretty much stuck with a full-face mask or a nasal design with a chin strap. Judging by your name, you at least don’t have to deal with facial hair. I’ve got a full beard, so a full-face mask was not an option for me. My first mask was a Philips Wisp, which is a nose-only “pig snout” style. I then tried Philips’ nasal pillow option and liked it immensely when it worked and disliked it immensely when it didn’t - it was just not quite right for my face.

Ask your DME or doctor about putting the machine to auto. Both the ResMed S9 and the Philips REMStar machines are very clever - probably more so than the tech at the sleep lab - and they respond on the fly if they detect apneas or snoring. My prescription was written for a range of 4 to 20, so those are the bounds of my machine’s auto settings, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone as high as 11 - usually, my 90% pressure runs between 8 and 9.

I’ve been using CPAP since June. I went from “And you’re still alive?” type numbers to an AHI that’s generally under 2. No more nodding off at work, no more falling asleep at 8 PM watching TV, and fewer headaches. Yes, there will be nights you have dreams about fighing with an octopus, and there will be (probable the same!) nights where you’ll wake up with the mask flung across the room. Stick with it, work with the DME and and you should soon be wondering how you got along without CPAP for so long.

12

Girl Hermit, like you I started with the full face mask because of the same concerns about breathing through my mouth. I hated, hated, hated that mask, for reasons that sound like yours – the mask wouldn’t stay seated and I’d get leaks all the time that would wake me, from air blowing in my eyes to the mask blowing “raspberries” on my skin. I’d have to tighten the straps uncomfortably tight to stop all of this, and I spent much time in the middle of the night playing with the straps rather than resting.

After a month of terrible sleep, I switched to the nose mask with a chin strap to keep my mouth shut. Much, much better. I got the kind of nasal mask that fits around your nose; there are styles that stick two tubes in your nostrils that some people love, but I haven’t tried them. With the nose mask, the leaks were gone, the mask was lighter and didn’t need to be so tight, and I slept well. A much better experience.

I was afraid the chin strap would be uncomfortable, but it wasn’t at all. You don’t need to tighten it very much, and you can still open your mouth easily, it just provides enough resistance to doing so that your sleeping self doesn’t bother and just breathes through your nose. It was winter time when I started using the strap, and it was like pulling on a comfortable knit cap to sleep in; I’d guess in hot weather it would be too cozy. It turned out I only needed to use the chin strap for a few weeks anyway, then I was trained to breath through my nose. I never use the chin strap now.

I kept the full face mask for times when I have a cold and can’t breathe through my nose, which I can’t recommend enough. I’ve had to switch to face mask several times, and I don’t think I would have slept well without it. I’m better at tolerating the face mask now, although I still hate the thing.

One important tip with the face mask: before bed, wash the gasket that contacts your face with soap and water, and wash your face as well. This will help the mask “stick” to your face and reduce leaks, and you won’t need to tighten the straps so much.

13

You might have congestion on top of the apnea, so keep some nasal spray handy. The CPAP just keeps your sinuses inflated; if there’s another problem as well, you nee to deal with it separately.

14

You’ll get used to it. Besides the on/off switch, mine has a ‘ramp’ button. Full on, my CPAP is set to deliver 10 psi. When I hit the ramp button, it delivers 4 psi and it gradually goes up to 10. By then I’m sleeping away and don’t notice it.

The neat thing about a CPAP is that your cat can’t kill you in your sleep by sleeping on your face. You can even completely burrow under your covers (rendering immune to both murderous felines and all underbed/closet monsters and still breathe.

15

The biggest thing that can help (from my perspective both as a CPAP user and as a former medical assistant for a multi-lab sleep disorders clinic) is getting the right mask. If you are fighting your current mask, go talk to the DME supplier and get in for a mask-fitting. There are several main types (full face, nasal mask, and nasal pillows are the three most common), many manufacturers, and many styles within those groups. Each person will have a different experience/comfort with each mask.

Working for a sleep disorders clinic, I had an advantage in trying out a ton of masks before finding the best ones for me (I mostly use a nasal mask, but switch to a full face when I’m congested), but if I had to stick with the very first one I had, I wouldn’t love my CPAP the way I do. Any decent supplier should be happy to help you find the right mask for you – if they’re not, don’t be afraid to ask for your prescription and go elsewhere.

16

Moved form MPSIMS to IMHO, home of medical threads.

17

Stick with it. It gets better.

I have the nose-covering type of mask and I’ve been using that type for 15 years. They seem to be pushing the nasal pillow type for some reason these days.

But really, once you’re used to it, things get much better. You’ll like yourself in the morning much more.

I’ve become like Pavlov’s dog. Put the mask on me and I fall asleep.

18

When I first arrived I was told it was an observational study only and the sleep doctor would follow up in 3 - 4 weeks time but they came in after two hours and said they needed to hook me up to the CPAP because of the number of times I quit breathing (30+) per hour. No idea if this is normal or not (the hooking you up part).

The DME is 4+hours away, one-way. I live in a remote area so coming to my home wasn’t an option, unfortunately. To go back for a re-fit will be a day trip (which isn’t all bad, we can go shopping and eat in a restaurant)! It did take almost 2 hours at their place to set up though and show me how to use it.

Ha - as I was typing this they called to see how it’s going and I explained my concerns so far and she will have the man I originally saw last week call back with some suggestions.

I will ask, gotpasswords, about the auto settings. My number is 12 but it ramps from 5 to 12 over a 45 minute period. I almost find 5 more annoying than 12 really.

19

Until a few years ago I was a ‘through my nose only’ breather at night. I’m hoping the machine helps with that and if it does I can change to the nose pillow things but sounds like with a chin strap it might work either way. I’m going to speak to the DME about it when they call back.

20

Question about this actually - the fit is fine if I am on my back, for example, but when I roll onto my side it leaks. Is the nose mask better for people who move around a lot?

Also, just want to say Thank You to all who replied with tips and encouragement that it does get better. Again, in the daylight I’m a little more logical about it but last night in particular was frustrating. New mantra: It gets better!