Hello Guest, Welcome to Apnea Board !
As a guest, you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use.
To post a message, you must create a free account using a valid email address.

or Create an Account


New Posts   Today's Posts

Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
#1
Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
Hey all, I really just have two questions:
1) What does it mean when Sleepy head tells me I have an Unidentified Apnea Event? The Acronym is in your handy dandy guide, but the explanation isn't in the glossary.

2) This is about this forum. Everyone here seems terribly positive. Is there space here for the occasional rant. I mean I'm pretty accepting of my lot in life, but every now and again, I just wanna blow off, and this CPAP episode (though it pales in comparison to the rest of stuff life has thrown at me) for some reason is stuck in my throat (pardon that metaphor). However, if part of participating in this community is keeping positive, I'll take my rant somewhere less harmful :-}

Thanks!!
Post Reply Post Reply
#2
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
Unidentified apnea or unknown apnea as ResMed call them ... an apnea occurred during which a leak is higher than 30 L/m, preventing the machine to determine whether apnea is obstructive or central accurately
ResMed machine report unintentional leak (total leak - mask and mouth leak)

As for rant, there is "Off-Topic Forum' http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Off-Topic-Forum

Welcome
Post Reply Post Reply
#3
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
Wow! That was fast! Thanks, Zonk, both for the answer and a direction.

(05-15-2016, 08:43 PM)zonk Wrote: Unidentified apnea or unknown apnea as ResMed call them ... an apnea occurred during which a leak is higher than 30 L/m, preventing the machine to determine whether apnea is obstructive or central accurately
ResMed machine report unintentional leak (total leak - mask and mouth leak)

As for rant, there is "Off-Topic Forum' [link was here, but the forum won't let me quote it!]

Welcome

Post Reply Post Reply
#4
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
Hi plainhat,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
I know CPAP therapy can take some time to get used to, some take to it right away and others have a rough time with it.
If your rant has to do with the problems you are having with CPAP, feel free to tell us what is going on.
Hang in there and don't give up on your CPAP therapy, things take time to work out.
Much success to you.
trish6hundred
Post Reply Post Reply
#5
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
I am with you on the rant but for me once my first priority became comfort over numbers, my desire to rant went away. Made all the comfort settings I could to include raising the min pressure from 4 to 5. Now that I sleep all night, I just go with flow and enjoy the ride.

OBTW, my AHI went from around 4 to my best night ever .3 last night.
CPAP is a journey like “The Wizard of Oz”. It’s a long slow journey. You will face many problems and pick up many friends along the way. Just because you reach the poppies, it doesn’t mean you are in Kansas. 
Post Reply Post Reply
#6
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
G'day plainhat, welcome to Apnea Board.

Yes, we try to stay positive, but if you look through the forums you'll find plenty of rants. You won't be the first (or the last) so get it off your chest! Sometimes it does us good just to blow off a bit of steam, and having to sleep with a plastic alien strapped to your face and blowing air up your nose all night seems like a pretty good excuse to me. Smile

Post Reply Post Reply
#7
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
(05-15-2016, 08:32 PM)plainhat Wrote: 2) This is about this forum. Everyone here seems terribly positive. Is there space here for the occasional rant. I mean I'm pretty accepting of my lot in life, but every now and again, I just wanna blow off, and this CPAP episode (though it pales in comparison to the rest of stuff life has thrown at me) for some reason is stuck in my throat (pardon that metaphor).
Sometimes it helps to rant and get the anger off your chest.

But there are good and bad ways to rant. It helps to let people know up front that you just need to rant and that you're not looking to find an excuse to simply quit CPAP all together. It helps if you keep the language in the rant reasonably clean. It helps if you put "Rant" in the topic title. And it also helps if you read people's suggestions on how to fix the problems that lead to the rant.

What's frowned on are rants that have nothing more to say than "Give me an excuse for just quitting" or "CPAP is just a scam". It's also a bad idea to then dis anybody who politely responds with factual information or who tells you to not give up just yet.

Good luck with your ongoing journey in Hosehead Land.
Questions about SleepyHead?  
See my Guide to SleepyHead
Post Reply Post Reply
#8
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
Hi, plainhat. Your question about rants struck a chord with me. I got my CPAP machine last winter. I did a lot of hating it for the first couple of months that I had it. I kept thinking that I was like the character Andy in the sitcom "Little Britain", who says "I DON'T LIKE IT!"

People do rant some here, but I don't think we have an area specifically for ranting, where it's guaranteed that no one will offer a suggestion or make a positive comment.

When I first started using CPAP, I felt like I needed someone to acknowledge that it was very normal to hate having a medical device beside your bed. Normal to hate the fact that sleep, which should be such a natural thing to do, had suddenly become medicalized.

After sleeping with CPAP for about two months, I had gotten pretty comfortable with it. At that point, I gave myself permission to sleep without it one night a week if I felt like I wanted to do that.

I did that for about a month, and I looked forward to my "night off". Then I started getting into bed, turning off the light, then turning it back on 5-10 minutes later and deciding to use the CPAP after all.

At the moment, I'm still enjoying freedom from spring allergies because of the air filters on the CPAP machine.

I'm rambling here, but I think, for me, that ranting was a stage I went through. I still have short periods of dislike for the machine and nights where I think "Oh, I don't want to sleep with a mask on my face", but it's like my brain has gradually decided that it likes the positive effects of sleeping with CPAP, and that that is slowly translating into my developing a liking for the machine. By this time next year, I may have named my CPAP machine and started talking to it. (I really hope not!)

My conscious mind is still not too happy about the CPAP machine, but apparently my body really, really likes breathing well while I'm sleeping and is giving the machine a "YES" vote.





(05-15-2016, 08:32 PM)plainhat Wrote: Hey all, I really just have two questions:
1) What does it mean when Sleepy head tells me I have an Unidentified Apnea Event? The Acronym is in your handy dandy guide, but the explanation isn't in the glossary.

2) This is about this forum. Everyone here seems terribly positive. Is there space here for the occasional rant. I mean I'm pretty accepting of my lot in life, but every now and again, I just wanna blow off, and this CPAP episode (though it pales in comparison to the rest of stuff life has thrown at me) for some reason is stuck in my throat (pardon that metaphor). However, if part of participating in this community is keeping positive, I'll take my rant somewhere less harmful :-}

Thanks!!

Post Reply Post Reply
#9
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
Thanks to all of you. Feel free to move this somewhere else if need be.

Here's the thing -- setting rant tags on Hate-cpap -- I've weathered through most everything with a wry sense of humor: lupus, cancer, diabetes, gall bladder, thyroid shutdown and this very unusual thing where I had a second degree heart block, passed out and went into convulsions when I SWALLOWED. That last I could do a good stand up routine on :-) Oh, oh, Oh yeah, and then there was the defective pacemaker that had to be replaced. So I'm a pretty resilient gal and smile more than I gripe (or at least laugh when I gripe). It has never occurred to me to ask , "why me?" Honestly, I realize on some level that if my good luck was as good as my bad luck is bad, I'd have hit the big lottery jackpot by now, but I figure it all just means I don't generally sweat the small stuff. . . until now.

For some reason, this CPAP thing just makes me just plain ANGRY. I do have some history of claustrophobia, I probably have some issues with authority and the feeling of having to push against air to exhale makes me feel like I'm getting rolled by a wave and about to drown (in fact that is the dream my head made up as I awoke gasping and pulling the mask off). I've always told folks that if I'm about to kick the bucket, for heaven's sake don't shut me in a hermetically sealed room! Put me in the middle of a hay field where I can breathe good, fresh air with my last breath. I generally sleep with a window open at the head of my bed even when the temps drop into single digits. I dread stuffy, recycled air. I take trains when I can (even over night) so I don't have to deal with panic inducing airplane cabin air. Then, back when I was in grad school and going through a divorce and lupus and .... well I learned to manage stress through breathing exercises... measuring the inhale and the exhale, deep and long into sleep.

So when the least invasive device (nasal pillows) goes on for the few hours I've been able to manage, I need to fight all my usual sleep time habits. I'm suddenly dreading going to bed at night. If I get myself tired enough, I can get to sleep during the 45 minute ramp time (Thanks to reading here I figured out what that was about, since the guy who delivered it just set it to auto and left), but unfortunately that means I often screw up and fall asleep on the couch instead of in bed with my machine. I put in calls to the "CPAP clinic" three weeks in a row looking for help (the doc had told me to call them) and was ignored. Meanwhile the DME was calling warning me about compliance. When the clinic lady finally called after my Endocrinologist sent a note to her, all she said was that she couldn't help me if I wasn't compliant. I told her the doc had told me to call if I was having problems being compliant. I pointed out that if someone had helped me by explaining and changing the Ramp setting sooner, I would probably be closer to being compliant by now so maybe they can help me in some other ways. She finally, grudgingly made an appointment for me (will be on Wednesday). Since then, I've discovered the EPR, but since that isn't part of the patient settings I want to let them do that. I suppose that since it is set at 2 it still can be improved slightly.

Anyway, the few times I've been able to get close to a compliant night (missed it by five lousy minutes!) sleepyhead is telling me that my AHI was a whopping 0.28 (and yes that decimal is in the right place). Which brings me to another thing I obsess about when trying to sleep with the dang thing: The only reason I was sent for the sleep study was that my pacemaker reported irregularities. However since that time it has been determined that that was all artifact. Yes, I've been struggling with daytime sleepiness, but we also discovered that my thyroid was coming up short and sleepiness has always been the first sign that the thyroid is slipping.

So, if you've been kind and sweet and patient enough to read this far, I need to get control of these anger issues and rebellion and ... well if I'm ever going to be compliant. I just haven't figured out what I need to punch to get it out of my system. -- rant tags off --

Thanks if you got this far.

Post Reply Post Reply
#10
RE: Clueless Nube - Unidentified Apnea Events
(05-16-2016, 09:59 AM)green wings Wrote: I kept thinking that I was like the character Andy in the sitcom "Little Britain", who says "I DON'T LIKE IT!"
Amen to that :-)

(05-16-2016, 09:59 AM)green wings Wrote: After sleeping with CPAP for about two months, I had gotten pretty comfortable with it. At that point, I gave myself permission to sleep without it one night a week if I felt like I wanted to do that.
NICE. Right now I keep telling myself that if I can do the required 4 hrs Ill give myself the rest of the night off. I'm still trying! but yes that reward thing helps.

(05-16-2016, 09:59 AM)green wings Wrote: I'm rambling here, but I think, for me, that ranting was a stage I went through. I still have short periods of dislike for the machine and nights where I think "Oh, I don't want to sleep with a mask on my face", but it's like my brain has gradually decided that it likes the positive effects of sleeping with CPAP, and that that is slowly translating into my developing a liking for the machine. By this time next year, I may have named my CPAP machine and started talking to it. (I really hope not!)

Thanks :-) That does help. Maybe if I fill my head with this positive stuff I won't waste precious sleep time railing against the machine (reference intended :-) )

Post Reply Post Reply


Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Trying to Reduce CA Events chrotteg 10 351 03-26-2024, 11:08 PM
Last Post: chrotteg
  [Treatment] Clear airway / central apnea events -- causes and solutions? mitzvahtime 6 2,399 03-25-2024, 04:10 PM
Last Post: Jay51
  Invisalign to help sleep apnea and dental extractions as a cause of sleep apnea SingleH 10 613 03-24-2024, 07:00 PM
Last Post: stevew168
  Central events while falling asleep michaelyu15 7 268 03-20-2024, 06:22 PM
Last Post: michaelyu15
  Recently started CPAP -- very high proportion of Clear Airway Events matt2 0 118 03-17-2024, 02:48 PM
Last Post: matt2
  15-minute periods of massive events (OSCAR pics included) nicholasb600 2 177 03-14-2024, 09:42 AM
Last Post: BoxcarPete
  Why does my clear airway events keep increasing? deirdrepen 3 269 03-12-2024, 02:37 AM
Last Post: stevew168


New Posts   Today's Posts


About Apnea Board

Apnea Board is an educational web site designed to empower Sleep Apnea patients.