So... night #1 with me and the CPAP machine...
Category Everything Else
Yesterday I had my appointment at the medical device company to pick up and get trained on my new best friend at night, my Resmed CPAP machine. The session was actually enjoyable, as the company (NW Medical) is very impressive in their customer service, and the guy doing the training was pretty fun to joke around with. When finished after an hour, I had a new computer bag-like piece of luggage hanging on my shoulder, and was out the door.
Last night I set the device up (painfully simple), put the straps around my head, got the nostril plugs placed, and turned it on. Voila! Air! There's a ramping feature that you can set to have the flow start off light and then ramp up over 5 to 30 minutes to the prescription setting (which in my case is 11 cubic whatever meters of airflow). I read for a bit, and got to the point where I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I figured that was the best time to turn off the light and try sleeping (without drugs) with this for the first time.
And by and large, I did! :)
I woke up when Sue came to bed a couple hours later, and there was some adjustment that was needed at that point. Condensation from the humidifier had built up, and I was getting a gurgling/popping noise when I breathed. Took me a couple minutes to figure out that the moisture causing the sound was in the hose curve that was hanging off the bed. When I pulled the hose up, I heard the water drain back into the tank, and the noise disappeared. I turned down the humidifier setting at that point, and we'll see if we can get a better setting to prevent that going forward.
The rest of the night wasn't too bad. I wasn't sleeping totally soundly as the nose was starting to hurt a bit from having this "thing" on it all night. The verdict from the spousal unit was that I wasn't snoring, but there were more breathing noises when I slept on one side than the other. I think that was due to hose placement. Facing the unit (the "quiet side"), there was no pull on the mask. Turned over (the "noisy side"), the hose was across my body and the weight was probably causing the mask to sit slightly differently on my face.
I think tonight I may try clipping the hose to where it goes over the top of the head. That might alleviate some of the facial shifting and allow me to roll over a bit more. As everyone has told me, it'll take time to get used to the machine, to figure out what works and what doesn't, and so on. That's OK, as I'm committed to making this work for me. I'm tired of being tired...
I'll follow up on this in about a week or so and let you know how it works in terms of making me more alert during the day. Right now I feel OK (11 am in the morning), but I'm not expecting overnight miracles on that front until my body gets used to sleeping with the device in place.
Yesterday I had my appointment at the medical device company to pick up and get trained on my new best friend at night, my Resmed CPAP machine. The session was actually enjoyable, as the company (NW Medical) is very impressive in their customer service, and the guy doing the training was pretty fun to joke around with. When finished after an hour, I had a new computer bag-like piece of luggage hanging on my shoulder, and was out the door.
Last night I set the device up (painfully simple), put the straps around my head, got the nostril plugs placed, and turned it on. Voila! Air! There's a ramping feature that you can set to have the flow start off light and then ramp up over 5 to 30 minutes to the prescription setting (which in my case is 11 cubic whatever meters of airflow). I read for a bit, and got to the point where I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. I figured that was the best time to turn off the light and try sleeping (without drugs) with this for the first time.
And by and large, I did! :)
I woke up when Sue came to bed a couple hours later, and there was some adjustment that was needed at that point. Condensation from the humidifier had built up, and I was getting a gurgling/popping noise when I breathed. Took me a couple minutes to figure out that the moisture causing the sound was in the hose curve that was hanging off the bed. When I pulled the hose up, I heard the water drain back into the tank, and the noise disappeared. I turned down the humidifier setting at that point, and we'll see if we can get a better setting to prevent that going forward.
The rest of the night wasn't too bad. I wasn't sleeping totally soundly as the nose was starting to hurt a bit from having this "thing" on it all night. The verdict from the spousal unit was that I wasn't snoring, but there were more breathing noises when I slept on one side than the other. I think that was due to hose placement. Facing the unit (the "quiet side"), there was no pull on the mask. Turned over (the "noisy side"), the hose was across my body and the weight was probably causing the mask to sit slightly differently on my face.
I think tonight I may try clipping the hose to where it goes over the top of the head. That might alleviate some of the facial shifting and allow me to roll over a bit more. As everyone has told me, it'll take time to get used to the machine, to figure out what works and what doesn't, and so on. That's OK, as I'm committed to making this work for me. I'm tired of being tired...
I'll follow up on this in about a week or so and let you know how it works in terms of making me more alert during the day. Right now I feel OK (11 am in the morning), but I'm not expecting overnight miracles on that front until my body gets used to sleeping with the device in place.
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