. . . in the distant, early morning . . .

Sleeping with APAP

Sleeping has been a gigantic pain in the ass for a long time.  I would go to be and lay awake until I fell asleep, waking up a few hours later to pee, then having trouble falling asleep.  Sometimes I’d give up around 4am and simply stay awake, ending with an afternoon nap and a really screwed up sleep schedule.

So, I finally caved and did a sleep study, and was diagnosed with OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnea).  Yippee.

I ended up with a ResMed S9 AutoSet and some nasal mask whose name I forgot.  The mask had a heavy forehead brace, and after the first night sleeping with it quite loose I 1) hadn’t really slept, and 2) couldn’t touch my forehead (owie!). 

For the first 30 days on this program I can try as many masks as I want, and bonus? I get to keep the previous ones.  So I did some research on masks without the forehead brace, and decided to try the Swift FX For Her.  The first two nights weren’t so great.  The first night I couldn’t get comfortable, and it turned out i had it installed upside down.  After watching the videos on ResMed’s sites, I fixed it all up, re-adjusted properly, and tried again.  Well, the second night I took a sleep aid and twisted the whole mask up, so it was upside down again.  I did sleep the second night, but my nose hurt when I woke up.  I checked it, noticed it was twisted, turned it the right away and slept again for a much better 2 hours. 

But my data was all screwed up for that night.  And by screwed up, I mean I had major leaks.  0.0 Medium, 6.0 95th Percentile, but Maximum 106.8.  Ouch.  Now I think this was still therapeutic a majority of the time, based on the medium being 0.0 L/min (Leaks/minute).  But it hurt my nose and wasn’t as therapeutic as it should have been.

Compare that with this lovely data from last night.

Much better numbers.

The summary graphs for last night are pretty nice too.  Now the first two (the 17th and 18th) I had the wrong machine, so I don’t have the leak data for the old nasal mask.  But that’s ok.  It doesn’t matter if it leaks - I won’t comply with it anyway, it hurt my forehead.

Now the really fun thing to look at are the detailed graphs.  I bet you never knew that sleep could be this fascinating?

Having this data over the course of the month will prove very interesting in my sleep trends.  I am a bit concerned about the Central Apneas, since that was never mentioned during my sleep study - but I did an in-home sleep study that can diagnose only obstructive sleep apnea.  I’ll have to talk to my doctor about that,  I guess.

I’m still learning about what a lot of this data means.  But it sure is fun, and I love learning about what my body is doing when I’m asleep.  I’m still waiting on the “more dreams” and REM rebound stuff that they talk about, but I think that stuff usually happens after a few weeks of therapy.

I think I’d be less likely to comply with the therapy if I didn’t have this ability to review data, so I’m really happy I went and made myself informed.  I’m loving it so far!

-Lisa, on January 23, 2011 at 12:09 pm

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