Making progress, could use an extra set of eyes!

[Bandit0594]

Hello. I have been on a CPAP for 6 years and it appears my wife is the only one who has benefited! 


Long story short, typical symptoms of morning headaches, daily fatigue, mood swings, etc. were startng to wear on my marriage and family life. With the CPAP route already covered (I thought), I started looking at testosterone therapy. Although semi-helpful, I am still crashing mid day with crappy, minimal sleep. I started poking around and have found this website as well as youtube videos and have tinkered wityh my machine a bit. I do not have my original results from my study and Kaiser may not either since I have made multiple phone calls to multiple departments, with no resolve. 


Since I have started tracking my sleep in 2019ish, I average 5-6 hour of sleep a night. Some of that was due to callouts at 3am, some of it was just my body saying you've had enough sleep! Oddly enough, the graph I am attaching is the longest I have slept in years, so I think I am making progress. The problem I am running into is there is such a firehose of information on this forum, I am have difficulty focusing on the granular nature of these graphs. 


All of this to say, Kaiser wants me to take another sleep study before I can see an ENT and then they can start discussing my current readings. After the days of reading on this forum, I trust the members more than I do Kaiser. Is there anything glaring in my graphs that I can work on, hoping to get it figured out without getting them involved needlessly?


My main concerns are my O2 dropping into the mid 80's (Wellue Ring) and my pulse ranging 54-103bpm during my sleep.

Side note, my latest pressure is 11/18. I will try to update that shortly.


Thank you in advance

[Deborah K.]

As you are bumping against your upper-pressure limit, I suggest you raise the number to 20.

I cannot think why they would require another sleep study to see an ENT.  I would ask if you can make an appointment and see one without it, assuming you want to see one.

As to oxygen, the ResMed machines allow an oxygen tube to to attached to your mask.

I notice that when your flow limits rise, so does your pressure.  This may indicate that you would benefit from switching to a bilevel such as the ResMed AirCurve 10 Vauto.

Again, welcome, and best wishes for great therapy and comfort!  

[Bandit0594]

Thank you for the welcome and the timely response, bedtime is here! I will make that change and report back in a few nights. And yes, they are a treat to deal with. At this point I am just trying to attack from all possible angles. I truly appreciate your feedback because when I start scrolling through my data, it is hard to make anything out since there is so much that is so different going on.

[Bandit0594]

Moved pressure up to 20, so knocking on the upper limit again. My O2 low was 86% but overall was only below 90% less than one minute all night while my pulse is still all over the place with a range of 57-106. Not much improvement overall of sleep quality. 

The correlation between the flow limit and pressure continued and is slightly comforting knowing what is behind it. The screenshot I am attaching on the otherhand is pretty weird. As far as I can tell, everything looks good except for the flow rate? What causes that craziness that starts at 01:19:17? Then at 01:19:45, is that the start of a possible CA that runs out before it is flagged for time?

[Deborah K.]

Would you please post the chart for the whole night? The close-ups don't tell much.

[Bandit0594]

Ha, that would make sense! Here is the full night.

[Bandit0594]

One more night at 20 but it appears I did not need all of that. It looks like a couple more events but less CA's that are more typical for me, looking through my history. I wish I had been more proactive earlier on and put a dang SD card in my machine! 

Oxygen saturation ran from 86-97% with just over a minute under 90%, pulse range tightened slightly at 59-101.

[Bandit0594]

Last nights readings with a brand new mask, headgear, etc. After having a bad reaction to some new thyroid medication, I did some heavy breathing exercises early on that appears to have set some false flags. I think my offical sleep time was at 10pm so anything before that was caused by my stellar breath work! With my median rate at 11.44 for the night, would it make sense to move up my minimum or leave it as is? And espite the ceiling of 14, I would assume leave it at 20 for a bit longer in case last night was a fluke?

Oxygen saturation ran from 88-97% with a little over 2 minutes under 90% total for the entire night. Pulse opened back up to 55-107bpm. After doing some digging, that appears to be driven by the thyroid medication. The last night before I started TRT and then the thrypoid meds, the range was 48-90bpm.