G'day MrsBrando. Welcome to Apnea Board.
Some people take to CPAP like ducks to water, for others it's a journey, and some never make it at all. It's estimated that 50% of people who start CPAP therapy eventually give up. This is a great shame as even mild sleep apnea can have bad effects on your overall health in the long term. The most important factor in success is a strong and knowledgeable support network. Family can help, and your doctor
should help, but for many people it's forums like Apnea Board which provide the knowledge and emotional support needed to help you through.
We're all in the same boat here - we are all fellow hose-heads, and we know what it's like to start out. And in many cases our medical practitioners have let us down. It's a sad fact that many doctors (even sleep specialists) don't really "get it" when it comes to living with apnea and CPAP.
Just going through a couple of the issues you've raised, in no particular order:
Simplus and Quattro Air masks blowing into the eyes. Yes - this happens to me too, and it's a real pain. After trying various liners (Google Pad-a-cheek and Remzz) I found the simplest way to fix this problem is to take a strip of light flannelette material (offcuts from the grandkids' PJs) and fold it so you end up with a piece four layers thick about 15mm wide and 75mm long. Lay this over the bridge of your nose then put the mask on to hold the strip in place. Make sure that the ends don't stick into your eyes, and that the mask seats on the cloth. I have found this a 100% fix for the eye leakage problem.
The machine doesn't appear to be blowing when you wake up. This is just your body adjusting to the pressure overnight. At first it feels like you're breathing in a hurricane, but by morning it doesn't feel like any pressure at all. This is quite normal. It's very unlikely your machine is malfunctioning - they are very reliable.
Snoring is getting worse. This usually indicates that the pressure is too low. It can also be that the leaks you're experiencing are too big for the machine to compensate.
You feel worse with the machine than without it. Yep - I know exactly what you mean. Your body has to learn a new way of breathing, with a compressor blowing air into your eyes and a plastic alien strapped to your face! It
can be difficult to adjust, and if you're experiencing leaks and the settings aren't optimal then it just gets so much harder. So let's deal with the leaks first, then we'll tackle the other settings.
To get to the bottom of some of these problems we need to see the data which is produced by your machine - this is where #SleepyHead comes in. It's a software program which displays some lovely graphs and statistics so we can see exactly what's going on. Don't worry if you're not computer savvy - a child of twelve can do it. You just need to find a child of twelve.
Here is a detailed guide to SleepyHead:
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...epyHead%20
Here are some tips on how to organise and post your charts to give the best information:
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...ganization
http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php...pnea_Board