(04-06-2016, 03:10 PM)sleepyintexas74 Wrote: The insurance finally agreed to a sleep study--and sure enough--my oxygen level was 79% and I experienced zero REM cycle during the overnight sleep test.
What was the diagnostic AHI? What did the diagnostic sleep study say about snoring and RERAs? What did the diagnostic sleep study say about PLMD? And how much time was your O2 level below 90%? How long was it below 80%?
Quote:
We tried CPAP, but they bumped me up to BiPap with a high pressure range (most people are shocked at how high it is!).
How high is high? IPAP =??? and EPAP = ??? Are you using Auto BiPAP or fixed BiPAP?
Quote:One year later, I am still exhausted. I have a sleep tracker with ResMed, which indicates me pulling off my mask 3 to 4 hours in to sleep--something I don't realize/remember doing. A lot of mornings, I will reapply my mask and sleep until noon (after getting kids off to school).
In an average night, how much time are you sleeping
without the mask on? I know you're pulling the mask off without remembering it, but if you are sleeping 3-4 hours with the mask on and then another 2-3 hours without the mask before you wake up to get the kids off to school, that could explain why you are still exhausted and still have depression issues.
What have you tried doing to prevent yourself from removing your mask in your sleep?
And what does the machine say your AHI is when you are using the machine?
Finally, the sleep tracker software from Resmed shows you only a small amount of the total data recorded by your machine. Would you consider downloading and installing SleepyHead on your computer and looking at all the data?
Quote:I am just wondering WHY I am so tired all the time? Even after good nights (5 to 6 hours!). My mom thinks I am the laziest person in the world. I have a lot of guilt over how tired and disinterested in life I have become. I take an anti-depressant, anxiety medication and Gabbapentin for nerve pain.
Without seeing all of the data in SleepyHead for a couple of typical nights, it's pretty difficult to address your very important question of why you are still feeling so tired.
One part of the puzzle is this: How infrequent are the good nights? If you only have 1-2 good nights a week, then that may explain why you're still feeling so crappy. But then the question becomes:
How can we help you increase the number of good nights to 5-6 good nights per week instead of 1 or 2? But to answer that question we need a lot more data that is easily obtained by looking at what your machine records using the SleepyHead software.
In particular, we need to see:
- The AHI data and when the events are happening during the night.
- The usage pattern data for a month or more. Intermittent usage caused by pulling the mask off can be an issue.
- The leak data---both the 95% leak rate and the leak graph itself. Sometimes largish leaks will wake people up just enough to make them pull the mask off.
- The pressure curves if you are using Auto bi-level
And then there's the fact that you are also dealing with depression issues. While depression can be a symptom of untreated OSA and while properly optimized CPAP treatment for OSA can lead to a lessening of depression symptoms, it's also possible that your depression is not directly caused by your OSA. In that case optimal CPAP therapy might make the depression easier to treat, but it may not make as big of a difference as you were hoping it would.
So it's also important consider your meds:
Which antidepressant are you on? Has it ever made much of a difference in your mood? And have you told the doc who prescribed the antidepressant that you are still feeling depressed and have become disinterested in life? And that you feel guilty about that fact?
Likewise what antianxiety meds are you on? Do they work? Or do you still feel anxious a lot of the time?
Likewise with the Gabbapentin for the nerve pain: Does it work reasonably well to control your nerve pain? Or are you still dealing with a lot of physical pain issues? Do you experience a lot of nerve pain when you are trying to get to sleep at night? Are you in pain when you wake up? And have you talked to the doc who prescribed the Gabbapentin about whether it's working?
Quote: Can anyone understand why my BiPap doesn't seem to work?
Without seeing the actual data recorded by your machine, it's impossible to speculate why your BiPAP doesn't seem to make much of a difference. It does sound on the surface like you have more than just the OSA going on medically wise. And it could be that you won't feel much better until
all of your chronic medical conditions are under control with appropriate optimal therapy.
Having said that, I will add that it took me about a year of PAPing to start to feel better on a consistent basis. Feeling better took not only learning how to sleep well with my BiPAP all night, it also took reteaching my body how to sleep well in the first place. (I have a lot of insomnia issues.) And it also took bringing my chronic headache and TMJ problems under control. And it took some counseling for anger management since I *loathed* the presence of the BiPAP in my life for a long, long time. So I can understand the frustration of being a year into PAPing and not feeling any better quite well.