I recently diagnosed with OSA, looking for information I came across this excellent forum with helpful people.
My story is a bit strange and I hope maybe someone can give me some insight, I have tried to read my own sleep study and come up with some theories of what is going on but could be helpful to get some second opinions.
My story:
I always had some bad days like 1-2 per month but around the start of the year I started having spells of what I would call dizziness and tiredness. Not knowing what was going on I thought it was just a bug, usually this lasted 1-2 days and then I had a few days of recovery with frequent naps during the days and early bedtime and I was quickly back to my normal self. However it started to increase in frequency and duration to the point where I had some serious mental issues about what was going on. Being new to the US and just moved here I had no health insurance or possibility to get it, I did visit urgent care and was told it was just a sinus infection...
Fast forward to around October where I finally get health insurance and someone to actually take my complaints about tiredness seriously. At this point the tiredness and chronic headaches are never giving me any rest, I can't work and my life is more or less on hold until I get better. Doing a sleep study quickly confirms I had OSA. This was a split-study and the next day thinking about it I formed a theory about why it appeared so sudden.
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Reading the diagnostic part of the report says sleeping on my back I had AHI of 29.9, while sleeping on the sides it as 0. I did only sleep for about 20 min in a non-supine position so it might not be that accurate but still it's an insane difference. Same with the therapeutic part but this time much lower AHI supine. With this information I started thinking why the sudden change. I realized I never sleep on my back. I'm a stomach/side sleeper, but at the beginning of the year I had some discomfort in my stomach and tried sleeping more on my back. Shortly after this the tiredness started creeping up more and more, in order to fix this I got new pillows and tried even more sleeping on my back since I at first thought it was a neck/back issue.
The day after the study I started sleeping on my stomach again and soon felt much better, but I occasionally wake up on my back still. I have gained some weight since moving the US, so trying to fix that but difficult without energy. I was hoping the CPAP machine would help me even more, but waiting for insurance to give me one is just taking to long.. I'm still waiting. I decided to just buy a second hand machine (ResMes S9 AutoSet) to try it out.
My experience with CPAP:
I have been using the machine for about 2 weeks now, some days I feel just fine waking up a bit groggy but not to bad. Other days I'm like a zombie, I'm having more bad days now then just sleeping on my stomach. I guess it takes time to be adjusted to the machine, I don't have much of an issue falling asleep with a full face mask (I'm a mouth breather). First week I used it all the time, but I still having many bad days. From feeling hopeful to now distressed and about to give up, had 3 bad days in a row and felt really bad. Might have been that I needed more sleep, the forth day I just slept without had issues with leaks in my eyes and sore nose so I decided to just skip it for one night and try a positional therapy device (Tennis ball in t-shirt) after reading about it on this board. To my surprise I slept really good that night, still tired from sleep debt. Now I really wonder how bad my apneas is sleeping on only stomach/sides. So I did a bit of a experiment last night, put he machine on lowest setting and use the Tennis Ball. I had some issue falling asleep but managed to get about 3 hours of sleep with it and AHI was 0.77. Slept the rest of the night with the machine off. Not bad, woke up very tired however maybe just too little sleep in total.
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Looking at Data and Settings:
Attaching data from some night where I woke up tired, overall it looks like most of my issues are clustered. Even when there is no events still my flow limit and respiratory rate looks clustered to me ? I did ordered a "The Eliminator" to try, wont get it until tomorrow however.
I have experimented with the settings a fair bit, I started with 8 cmH2O and 3 EPR the first days. Felt like a zombie in the morning, more tired than usual. Saw some bad CA cluster so set it to 1 EPR, then EPR off. Almost no CA after that.
I ran a few days with fixed 8 cmH2O, feeling pretty good and hopeful. This is one of the good days.
Once again got another zombie day. Thought it might help with some extra pressure the next few changing to APAP 8-12, ending up with good AHI < 1.
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