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Newbie here and I need help!
#1
Newbie here and I need help!
Hello all! Last night was my first night using my ResMed air sense 10 apap. All settings are pretty much set to auto and I am using pillows. Here are my concerns:

1. When I tested it in the office, it felt like there was much more air blowing in my nose and my immediate thought was I will never get used to this. When I turned it on myself at home for the night, it was much easier to get used to and didn't bother me at all. In fact, I didn't really feel anything in my nose and worried it wasn't working. It did, however, create pressure when I opened my mouth so I knew it was working. Is that normal? I just never really felt anything blowing in my nose much all night. My readings are showing that my pressure was built up to about 9.8 when I woke up but again, it didn't feel like much to me.

2. In the morning, I turned it off by hitting stop and the snowflake icon started flashing and air is still coming out of tubing. It took about 15 minutes to stop. That seems excessive. Is that a normal amount of time? I line in AZ where it is extremely dry so perhaps that has something to do with it?

Any help you can provide to this newbie is greatly appreciated!
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#2
RE: Newbie here and I need help!
I'll answer in reverse order.....

When you shut the machine off it will run a cool down mode for about 15 or 20 minutes, this is a normal function to allow humidifier and heat plate to cool down and blow out the warm moist air in the system. Excessive moisture can be somewhat damaging to the blower in the machine so the cool down feature reduces heat and moisture in the circuit. When the cool down is running you'll see the snow flake icon, whereas if the machine is running in therapy mode with humidifier running you'll see the heating icon instead.

If for any reason (I can't think of a good one) you want to turn off the cooling cycle before it finishes you can hold down the power button for a few seconds and the machine will power down and enter a low power sleep mode, this will also terminate the cool down cycle and blower.

You are indicating that the machine is still set on default settings for auto pressure. That means your initial pressure when you turn on therapy is set very very low at 4 cm pressure when it starts up. This is usually such a low pressure that most people feel a bit starved for air and it can be uncomfortable for most people to start that low. I would suggest that you get the clinical manual from this forum and learn how to adjust your settings yourself, a better starting presure for most folks would be at least 6cm instead of the default of 4 cm.

Another default setting you might want to change is "Essentials" in the clinical menu, change it to "Plus" which will allow the patient to change more settings in the patient menu and also provides more data in the sleep report of your machine, in the plus mode you'll get access to your AHI number and breakdown in the sleep report on your screen.

I might also suggest downloading the SleepyHead software so you can get a better idea of your therapy efficacy and be able to further fine tune you pressure setting and optimize your therapy.

The lower end of the auto pressure setting is the most important. If your auto machine is going up to around 9cm during the night for most of the time, as an example, then you would want to set your lower pressure up a bit closer to that pressure that you machine wants to go to. In this example maybe set lower pressure up around 8cm so the machine doesn't have to increase so far to get to optimal pressure for you, this will reduce the time that it takes the machine to react to flow limitations, snores, and Apneas so you'll have better therapy with smaller pressure swings and improved airway patency.

Also if you are using ramp the default is 4 cm starting pressure for that as well, but it can also be increased in the clinical menu and I would also suggest upping that as well if you feel like you are not getting enough air to begin with.

Do get the clinical manual from this forum, but in the mean time, to get into clinical settings push and hold the round selector button at the same time as you push and hold the home button......the clinical menu will unlock in a few seconds of silmiltaneously hold down those two buttons.
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#3
RE: Newbie here and I need help!
I have nothing to add to that accept Welcome
Using FlashAir W-03 SD card in machine. You can download your data through wifi with FlashPAP or Sleep Master utilities.

I wanted to learn Binary so I enrolled in Binary 101. I seemed to have missed the first four courses. Big Grinnie

Stick it to the man, Download OSCAR and take back control of your data!

Thanks Ian. Like I didn't have enough Honey-Do projects to tackle. Mornincoffee
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#4
RE: Newbie here and I need help!
Welcome to the board! I just wanted to add that the reason why they have that very low 4 cm setting is because kids use these machines. They aren't bothered at all by the lower settings and can breathe fine. Found this out chatting with someone at the ER during the usual endless wait for tests to come back. I reset my settings to 6 and that was perfect. I'm still ramping to 8 (the low setting prescribed) because I found 8 to just to be too much starting out. My machine was set to go up to 12 and that never woke me up, and in fact, spent a lot of time there so it was moved to 12.5 and still didn't wake me.

I get my Airsense on Monday. Big Grin I can hardly wait. I have circles under my eyes again from the not sleeping since my used machine bit the dust.
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#5
RE: Newbie here and I need help!
Hi Rellyrooly,
WELCOME! to the forum.!
Much success to you with your CPAp therapy and hang in there for more responses to your post.
trish6hundred
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#6
RE: Newbie here and I need help!
Yea, I had to change mine as 4 I felt like I was suffocating. I have mine set at 6.8 with my max at 9.8. If you are not sensitive to the pressure that is good. It means you are less likely to wake up when the pressure increases. Mine was set at 4-20 and the pressure would just keep rising until it was nearly at 20. This seems to be a common problem.
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