Your Personal CPAP Success Story - Post Here

[Sleeprider]

Or read the helpful thread HOW DO I 

[MarineCorpsNerd1]

It keeps saying I need 4 posts to make a thread but I have over 6. Don't know if it is just because I banged them out so fast or if one of the admins needs to approve me 

[OpalRose]

Yes, you’ve been busy with posting. All you need do is ask us or post a question in the Members Account Help Forum.

As of now, I think if you just wait a bit for the forum software to play “catch up” with you, then you should be able to post a thread soon. Try again a little later.

[SuperSleeper]

It keeps saying I need 4 posts to make a thread but I have over 6. Don't know if it is just because I banged them out so fast or if one of the admins needs to approve me 

You do not need 4 posts to start a new thread.  Just follow the directions here:
http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-...New-Thread

[SeverelyHypoxicSnorer]

About 3 years ago my friend told me I snore really loud. We were sharing a hotel room while she was away from home for specialized medical treatment. Her husband has a CPAP and they're both doctors, so how could I argue.
Got a home sleep study, and my events per hour put me in the moderate range, so I opted for an oral appliance. Felt MUCH better, and got a follow-up sleep study.
Then I got TMJ, and treatment involved getting rid of the appliance.  Luckily (maybe), my most recent, post-treatment sleep study was still bad enough to qualify for a CPAP, so I didn't have to go dig up old results.
Here's the weird part: AHI is nearly meaningless for me, because I have dyspnea, not apnea. I never stop breathing, and I don't wake up gasping or anything. I sleep right through the night, loudly. My husband is a very sound sleeper, so never noticed. On vacation, people in the next campground complained, but whatever.
My friend casually asked recently, "So how low did your O2 Saturation go?" And I casually answered 59%.  Horrified looks and a "How are you even alive?" prompted me to do some research. 
Apparently that's REALLY low, sometimes causing the heart to quit. Especially since I inherited a blood clotting disorder.
Anyway, the CPAP is a life-changer. Thought I had early-onset dementia, but nope, just hypoxia.
Apparently your brain has gray & white matter, and they recover on different schedules. So after 3 months I could reliably think straight, but it took more than a year and a half to get my memory back.
Recently we had a nighttime power outage and I slept right through with no CPAP. Woke up with poor balance, bad headache, and stupidity...couldn't complete a sentence because I kept forgetting what I was trying to say.
Am waiting for Amazon to deliver my UPS (pure sine wave not modified, it's important). I never want to feel like that again!!

Oh, also: when I felt fully cured by the oral appliance, I bought a sleep oximeter. It showed that when the appliance was finally adjusted correctly, my sats were in the 80's instead of the 50's. Huge improvement, but CPAP is WAY better! Mid-90's always.

[Dormeo]

Wow, Severely, what a story! I’m so glad you are now well treated, and I will think of your story whenever I question whether to hang in there while my body repairs years of untreated damage.

[sheepless]

I don't know anything about dyspnea, defined as labored or difficult breathing. how does that manifest itself? you said your diagnosis was moderate [apnea]. does that mean all or most of your events were hypopnea? respiratory effort related arousals? upper airway resistance?

I, and many others I'm sure, can relate to your cognitive & memory problems. 3 years in & I'm only now feeling like I'm starting to recover from these after the better part of my lifetime with untreated apnea.

[SeverelyHypoxicSnorer]

Thanks for the reply.
The sleep clinic said I have dyspnea, or disordered breathing, which for me just meant really loud snoring. Snorelab called it "epic."
I almost never stopped breathing, and never woke up from low oxygen. Just snored loudly all night, so I guess upper airway obstruction and hypopnea. The doc described it as "trying to breathe through a very small straw," never getting enough air. 
Seems like this should make me wake up at least a little, but it doesn't. That's why I bought an alarm for when the power goes out.
If you look on the web for the effects of saturations in the 50's, the info is mostly about advanced lung disease. And sometimes mountain climbing or piloting an airplane. The whole apnea industry assumes that loss of REM sleep is the main problem, but that's not true for everyone! When your blood only has 55% O2 sat, I learned that the heart is getting 40% oxygenated blood, and can starve and stop. Scary. And the effects on the brain apparently are a lot like having a stroke, but less permanent. My grandpa snored really loudly too, and now I understand his dementia!

Hope that answered your questions. Writing this helps me understand and process my experience for the last few years. Dementia is embarrassing and made me become hermit-like. Working on it.

[sheepless]

epic. wow.
________

I prefer to think of it as cognitive impairment rather than dementia to keep the up the hope that it's recoverable. I too have been hermit-like, between the cognitive problems & sheer exhaustion. slowly getting better
every week.

I hope your machine improves things for you.

[Sleepster]

I prefer to think of it as cognitive impairment rather than dementia to keep the up the hope that it's recoverable.

There's no doubt a lot of it is recoverable. The question is how much. I found something to exercise my brain for several weeks and was astonished at what I was able to learn.

Little things can astonish, too. The first time I remembered a password was amazing. It floored me!