My dog did a new trick last night - he stepped on the off button of the power strip where I plug in my CPAP. He already was bugging me to wake up (he’s going through some anxiety stuff) and when that thing turned off I bolted right up!
I think I might be one of those people. I started using my CPAP this past December 1st. Before it arrived, I would wake up tired and be exhausted by mid-afternoon. Many work days would find me blocking a fake meeting on my calendar so I could take a nap.
Since December 1st, I have not only not taken a single nap, I haven’t even had to power through that urge. I feel dramatically better.
It’s not been perfect. The first few nights found me getting real relief and using the device all night, but I’d wake up to fight the hose and adjust my mask. That’s mostly behind me now. I still have Restless Leg Syndrome and I still urinate a time or two too many each night, but otherwise I am sold.
Eh, I’m not expecting anything dramatic. I’ll settle for the satisfaction of knowing that I am getting enough oxygen through the night.
mmm
Ruh-roh!!! Best not let him learn that stepping on that gets you awake, or he’ll be doing it constantly!!
I’ve heard of people whose cats put holes in their CPAP hoses. One hopes that the sudden hissing of air frightens Fluffy enough that she never does it again.
Not pet related: I have found that if I doze off on the couch, I will be actively STRUGGLING to breathe. I’ll stir enough to remember to inhale, but just can NOT wake myself up enough to actually change position. It’s a bit frightening, actually.
Mine started too a couple of times. One of several reasons he is banished from the bedroom at night 
.
I occasionally have dreams which include me either frantically trying to find a toilet, or trying to do something while feeling like I need to urinate. Oddly enough, when I wake up from these dreams I often don’t have any pressing urgency to run to the toilet.
Even if you didn’t every mask has an ‘anti-suffocation’ valve.
Even the idiots that are gluing their mouths shut with denture adhesive are protected.
I have a ResMed AirSense, not the Respironics Dreamstation. .
My husband’s machine is a Respironics, and he did indeed get a swap - I don’t know the model numbers. We’re a mixed marriage (actually when he first got a CPAP, his was physically very similar to mine, so we needed to be careful when travelling not to get 'em mixed up!).
The ResMed frankly is awful, tank-wise. You have to shove the tank in the end of the machine - and it takes two hands and a really strong grip to get it back out again.
The older one was a bit bulkier - but the water chamber could be removed by flipping up the lid. MUCH easier.
Admittedly, the newer one has some cool features - like the ability to upload your sleep history wirelessly (versus needing to take the little memory card somewhere). But the older one did a much better job of handling sleeping in on the weekends. With the new one, I tend to awake before I want to, either to the smell of burning, or a burning sensation in my nasal passages.
I recently began attempting to find a new mask style, one that didn’t have as bad a problem with leakage - having been alternating between the Swift FX nasal pillows (and arguing with DME providers who have several times sent me the “for her” version, which DOES NOT FIT MY HEAD), and the Pilairo. The Swift FX is about as lightweight as you can get, very comfortable, but very easy to dislodge. The Pilairo is fairly comfy, but the way it wraps around the nose (admittedly just a soft silicone cushion) can become annoying.
And my leak rate is higher than ideal.
So the first attempt at the clinic was a nasal mask - but to keep it from leaking, it had to be too tight. Then I tried this one:
Which is generally fairly comfy, though every now and then it just won’t seat quite right and becomes annoying. Also, because there’s nothing that even remotely pokes into the nostril - your nose is literally just resting on top of it - it’s hard to imagine how it would EVER get a decent seal.
It’s one of those with the hose on the top - and the headgear is mostly open tubes that connect to the pillows. Strange, but not uncomfortable, though it’s taken me a few days to get used to the trick of putting it on. Having the hose at the top is just weird as hell to me. Supposedly there are a lot of people who swear by that, that it keeps the hose out of the way, but personally I think if we didn’t have a headboard to drape the tubing over, I’d loathe it. All in all, I can deal with it, but it’s not a selling point.
The dealbreakers: 1) it isn’t helping my leak rate at all (weirdly though, despite the leakage, my AHI has always been decent, though I have to assume that’s skewed by the leaks). 2) As I was waking up this morning, I was having a bit of trouble breathing. I could - but with more effort than usual. Turns out, the mask had gotten slightly dislodged - and due to the design, it basically slid a bit out of position and was partially blocking my nostrils. Nope, nope, nope.
So the search continues: First suggestion was one that has a somewhat hard plastic frame to hold the cushion - I noped right out of that option, as I’m a side sleeper and it looked hideously uncomfortable.
He’s doing to try get me a sample of another one, the Nuance Pro.
All in all, I suspect that something with a hard frame will allow a nasal cushion to stay in place without pressing as hard on the nostrils, while soft headgear will win in terms of comfort. I once tried a style with a frame, and found that it tried holding the pillow at the wrong angle for my nose - I think the bottom of my nose is more horizontal while the thing was designed for someone with a bit of a tilt.
I have used CPAP 13 years now, generally quite happily. But a month ago I had neck surgery requiring me to wear a hard collar day and night, and had a hell of a time adjusting. The CPAP full face mask and the hard collar covered me in rigidity and it was overwhelming, I guess kind of claustrophobic (which usually isn’t an issue for me). It made matters worse that the neck surgery makes swallowing difficult and also causes increased phlegm production. I felt like I was choking and would wake up in agitation and misery.
It has grown a good deal better, partly because I’m recovering my pre-surgery throat functioning, but also partly because I joined a CPAP forum and downloaded and started using OSCAR software to read my own CPAP data. Most recently I changed my humidity from Auto to a higher level manual setting, increased my heated hose temperature, and figured out where rainout (condensation in the hose) starts being a problem.
I was sleeping 2 or 3 hours a night and nodding off all day. But last night I slept 9 hours 9 minutes. It was bliss.
There’s definitely improvements you can make if you get into the whole process.
I had my semi-annual checkin with the sleep specialists this week - required, as they prescribe me Good Drugz for the daytime sleepiness issues (which are only somewhat improved by use of CPAP).
We decided that I should try dinking with my settings a bit - maybe change it from auto to a fixed setting to see how I tolerate that. If I hate it, I can return it to the existing settings.
I wound up having to go back to my original mask, the Swift nasal pillow, that I’ve been using for 12+ years. Though after a nasty experience in a “nonsmoking” hotel last weekend, I had to throw out all the disposables (hose, mask etc.) and the Pilairo was the first one I grabbed when I needed a replacement, so I’m back on that temporarily.
Hopefully I’ll hear back from the sleep tech soon.
I read that wrong. I thought you said drinking. I need a doctor who prescribes that for sleep.
LOL.
Sadly, doctors tend to advise against that option. Doesn’t really work (if it’s the alcoholic version) and non-alcoholic drinks in excess interfere with sleep for other reasons, assuming you don’t want to wake up in a puddle.
Like the OP, i had a CPAP about 10 years ago that i just didn’t use. It had the full mask and i couldn’t get used to it. The last 6 months I’ve been falling asleep at work and I’m tired all the time. Went for a new sleep study and they said i had 68 incidences per hour, so severe apnea.
I’ve gone through the sleep studies and will be getting a new CPAP in a week and I’m so looking forward to it. This time it’ll be a nose mask.
The thing i found literally amazing is that i usually get up two or three times a night to urinate. However during the last sleep study wearing a mask i slept all the way through. That alone was life changing!
I’ve been upgrading the trailer with batteries and an inverter/converter to power all of the 110v stuff. While it was in front of the house, I decided to spend a couple nights in it to test. First night, CPAP is plugged into 110v and between 4pm and 6am, it only used 1/3 of the battery charge. (Which is awesome)
The second night, we were running low on propane, so I had the trailer plugged into the house and an electric heater running to help.
Around 2am I woke because the CPAP wasn’t working. It wasn’t an abrupt awakening, I wasn’t gasping for breath, it was just a ‘huh’ that’s not quite right, and I woke up.
(Turns out the outlet was on a GFI and one of the times the heater cycled it popped the GFI, and the magic inverter/battery combination took over for as long as it could…a little over 3 hours - heaters are AWFUL for power consumption.)
But it was the first time I had a CPAP interruption in the night and it was a whole lot less dramatic than I feared.
That is the style that I use. Have you tried all of the different sizes of pillows? I have a fairly average size nose but I have found that the small wide works best for me. The medium leaks too much and forget about the large. Small is OK but the small wide seals best.
I think one of the best outcomes from using a CPAP with the nasal pillows is that I have trained myself to keep my mouth closed when I sleep and only breathe through my nose. I have found that if I have a one day overnight trip I don’t need to take my machine with. I don’t sleep as well as at home but I don’t wake up feeling awful like I did before. Anything more than 2 nights and I’ll bring the machine along.
The CPAP does help me sleep better. That being said, I still feel sleepy during the day. I wish there was a way to deal with that.
OP update:
I just retired last month, switching my insurance from work to Medicare. The machine would have cost $96/month if I was still using my work insurance, with Medicare it will be $13/month.
So that is why I’ve waited until now to obtain the device. I have an appointment to pick it up Wednesday.
Also, I previously wondered about how the process in choosing a mask worked. As it turns out, they have sanitized try-on masks, and apparently tons of different ones. This is the reason I am going to the medical supply company in person to pick up my stuff.
mmm
Which style? The Swift?
I know the large pillows are too large; I have not tried the small. Is there truly a “wide” version of the small?
Having a clip on the hose helps with the dislodging: it’s a Velcro OneWrap, fed through a bog standard badge clip.
I ordered a pair from cpap dot com, saw what it was, and since then have made my own. 72 cents for the Velcro (and that’s if you go the most expensive route, a 5 pack at 3.59; other options go as low as about 25 cents apiece), and a cheap plastic and metal badge clip, at about 11 cents per unit.
This is the one. Only the small comes in wide.