It was about 18 months ago when I thought that I may have a problem.
I knew that I snored, LOUDLY, because my partner told me, even though she didn’t need to cause I often woke myself up! I was always feeling tired throughout the day and falling asleep on the couch immediately after dinner and snoring at the TV.
However more recently some troubling things occurred. Like often falling asleep (& snoring) at my computer terminal at work, this happened more and more, including any time of day. 10am, 3pm, whenever.
Then, whenever I would go for long drives I always felt as if I was about to fall asleep. I would stick my head out of the window, stop and splash water in my eyes etc. Luckily I never did doze off, but it was a big wakeup call (pun intended).
So I eventually went for an in-house overnight sleep monitoring. This came back with a reading of 65AHI. I don’t think I ever actually intended to use a CPAP (coz who actually wants too, right?) But the doctor made it very clear that I should by informing me that if I don’t it would take about 10 years off my life as well as risking early onset of dementia. THAT was the wakeup call!
I went to a major global firm who had a very good clinician who was extremely helpful and let me experiment with different machines and masks. In the end I settled for the Phillips DreamStation Auto CPAP with an F&P Brevida Nasal Pillow mask which I found extremely good and very comfortable. The deal was to pay AU$300 for the trial period and then, if I wanted to purchase it the AU$300 came off of the price of the machine and mask which was around AU$3,000, which I fully intended to purchase.
My 1st night’s sleep gave me an AHI of 2.8! This score dropped even lower as I got used to the machine and has been as low as 0.1 AHI. Best of all I felt awake all day, I can stay up watching TV till 12pm or whenever without feeling sleepy, I don’t feel as if we are all about to die when I’m driving long distances and perhaps best of all my partner reports NO SNORING!
I also especially like the app for my phone that I get from my unit’s Bluetooth connection. It tells me at a glance what my AHI etc was for last night.
Anyway, the very helpful clinician rang me and asks how things are going. I was able to tell her that I’ve never been better and my life and my health has completely turned around, and that is the NEW ME!
She was very happy for me but then told me that she has left that company so I won’t be seeing her again and that the company will contact me in September sometime to work out payment etc. So I thought I’d wait until they contacted me, after all, I had the money that I was going to pay them.
September came and no word. Then on September 30 (a Saturday) I receive an automatic email from them saying that I owed them $456 for rental on my machine for the month of September! I freaked out as I had NOT arranged rental whatsoever. Nobody contacted me at all to arrange my purchasing of the machine and mask and looking through my paper work nowhere did it say what date my trial actually finished.
Needless to say before I was able to go to the clinic on the following Monday morning I spent the weekend looking online to see how much the model was elsewhere.
Monday morning I took my trial machine, mask and their $456 rental bill to the company & complained about how they did this without contacting me, gave them back the machine and told them whilst I had fully intended to purchase this machine from them I will now be purchasing one online for a fraction of the price and that if they don’t squash the rental bill I’ll be contacting Consumer Affairs. I haven’t heard a word from them for almost a month.
The one that I eventually got online was exactly the same model & mask as the one that I had been trialling as it was so comfortable and quiet AND it was only $1786. With everything! So even by missing out on my $300 trial refund I was still $1000 in front.
I ordered it and it arrived 2 days later coincidently on my birthday!
Then I got $1000 back from my health fund so it was working out sweet!
When the machine arrived all was good except that I couldn’t adjust many of the settings as only a ‘Clinician’ could access this.
Fortunately though I stumbled across Apnea Board and was able to get the Clinician version of the manual and set it up the way I wanted.
Then I downloaded the SleepyHead software which is SO excellent and now I’ve been learning SO MUCH via the Forum, Wiki etc
So I want to give a BIG thanx to apneaboard for helping mine & others apnea situation.