I think the preceding replies have some good advice for starters. But while you're negotiating with the doctors and the DMEs, which could take a long time, you still need to be using the machine, so in any case you should get familiar with it and see if there are things that you need to tweak.
For instance, the chart that you posted shows that the machine is maxed out at a pressure of 16, so I would raise that upper limit to 20 if I were you, and check the results further after a night or two of that wider range. However, if your doctor is jealous of his or her control over your machine's settings and will throw a tantrum if you change anything, then maybe you should check with the doc first. Or maybe not; it really should be up to you, and it's significant that you're able to use Sleepyhead and/or Encore to demonstrate that the current settings are insufficient. Any doc who has any sense (and not an insanely huge ego) should look at that situation and say "OK, go ahead and tweak the settings yourself to get better results."
As for getting any actual help from the RTs at the DME companies, ha ha, good luck widdat. (I'm disgusted at the moment because I've just been having to deal with a runaround situation with my own randomly assigned RT at a DME, who seems to be incapable of the simple chore of reading data from SD cards. Foo.)
OBTW, being on CPAP therapy for a while has been known to reduce the incidence of acid stomach and gastric reflux (as the CO2 buildup is slowly purged from the body), so it's conceivable that if you continue with CPAP for enough weeks and months, eventually you wouldn't need the Pepcid. But that's merely a guess and I am not a doctor, etc.
Anyway, for starters, you need the user's guide for the Dreamstation Auto. If you already have that on paper, great. If not, here's a link to a PDF on the Philips web site; you can use your browser to download this file (not just view it in a browser window) and then you can print it, if not from the browser then from Adobe Reader or whatever.
http://incenter.medical.philips.com/docl...ction=Open
That will get you a file called
DreamStation_CPAP_User_Manual.pdf, which also covers the Auto model.
Second, to go along with the user's guide, you can probably use (sooner or later) the clinician's manual. At the top of the web page here on AB is a link to "CPAP Setup Manuals". If you go to that page and scroll down to (or do a search-on-page for) the heading "Philips-Respironics DreamStation Series Machines", you'll see a paragraph of instructions for getting into the machine's setup mode, with a link to "setup instructions with pictures". Copy & paste that paragraph somewhere to save it, or print it; same with the page linked to ("dreamstation-clinician-setup-instructions"). Also, back on the main "CPAP Setup Manuals" page, scroll down to the heading "SECTION THREE: CPAP Clinician Setup Manuals Available via Email", find the exact model name of your machine in the list under "Philips-Respironics Manuals", copy that line, scroll down some more to the section "HOW TO ASK FOR A MANUAL VIA EMAIL", and do that (send a message to the address given, with the model-name string pasted into the body of the message).
Once you've got the manuals, you can do some browsing in the machine's menus and maybe experiment with various things. For instance, newbies often find that what Philips calls Flex and Resmed calls EPR, exhalation pressure relief, can make a difference to how comfortable using the machine is at first. That can be set to 0 (off) or 1 through 3, representing the pressure differential, or delta, during exhalation relative to inhalation. When you're using the machine, if exhaling feels like you're trying to blow up a balloon, then increase the Flex setting by 1 and see whether that makes a difference. If not enough, increase it again. And so on.
That's all part of taking control of your own therapy and being proactive about the whole thing, which is the general approach recommended by everyone here at AB. We apneoids often find that the sleepydocs are too busy and/or oblivious to help us in any significant way. Even more often, we find that the RTs at our DME companies are effectively clue-free. So we dig into the machine settings and the data and roll our own.
Good luck, and hang in there. You can prevail.
And oh yeah, p.s.: here's my obligatory mask spiel. If the mask that you're using gives you any major problems, first you can do a search here at AB for discussion threads about that specific make & model, read up on it, and maybe get some answers or workarounds or whatever you need. But beyond that, it's important to keep in mind that there are dozens of CPAP masks in at least three main categories (full-face, nasal, nasal-pillows), and there's nothing saying that you have to stay with the one you've got, except possibly economic/financial constraints. If you're able to get a different make & model from your DME at no cost to you
or if you can buy one yourself (typically they're $75 to $100 retail, and of course never buy one from a DME at its outrageously inflated prices! ... always buy online from a discounting retailer; see the Supplier List linked to at the top of the page), then you can get away from whatever problems you're having with the current one. Even within the same type, like full-face or hybrid, there are other choices, most likely from other manufacturers, that could turn out to be more comfortable or less leaky or whatever you need. So the big point there is that you shouldn't blame CPAP therapy in general, or the machine, or yourself, if you have problems putting up with one particular mask for 8 hours every night. It's possible that another mask would make all the difference.