[Treatment] Request for OSCAR advice after several months of use

[benswon]

Hello, For almost 10 years now i've had issues where I'll start nodding off if I'm not actively doing something, and have had regular exhaustion issues long before that. 

Took a home sleep test and got a 11.4 for mild apnea. Have been using Oscar and a CPAP machine since November and have gotten my settings pretty dialed in. My issues with nodding off are mostly gone but I still feel exhausted most of the time, especially when I wake up. Wanted to post my results here of the last 3 days I used by cpap for at least 7 hours and see if anyone has any suggestions on if there's anything I should try to change as at this point i'm not sure if my issues are still related to apnea or if it's some other unrelated issue.


   
   
   

[Nightynite]

Impressive benswon, pat yourself on the back, not only do you have your charts posted correctly but your results look awesome. Stay the course with what you’re doing. You are on the healing side now and your progress on how you feel may seem slow but you will notice in the future you do feel better. You probably had sleep apnea for years, it’s going to take time for the body to recover.

Edit: the only thing I could add is if you haven’t had your blood work checked lately to rule out other underlying conditions maybe get that done, make sure they do the thyroid testing.

[Deborah K.]

I suggest that you raise your EPR level to 3.  This will help lower your flow limits and should make you more comfortable too.

Did you have a lot of CAs in your sleep study?  If not your CAs are likely treatment-emergent and will diminish on their own as time passes, giving you a lower AHI.

[benswon]

Thanks for the advice, I was thinking about raising that to 3 and maybe raising the pressure a little to see what affect that had so I'll try that over a week or two to see what happens.

I'm not too worried about the CA's, Zooming in my breathing gets pretty restless before a lot of them so I think it may just be me tossing and turning a lot or partially waking up, and the number for them is pretty low, when I first started was getting over 7 with the majority being CA's.

A sleep app I use with a smart watch usually shows me loosing up to 1 1/2 hours a night of sleep due to either tossing and turning or partially waking up periodically during the night which is why i'm trying to figure out if that's due to breathing/apnea issues or something else.

   

[Expat31]

Hi, 

If you think it may be "something else" you could get a pulse oxymeter, record overnight to cveck your SpO2, pulse and desaturation readings go make sure all is within acceptable limits. 

This information can be integrated into your set of OSCAR  graphs, which is a pretty neat feature. 

It's a really useful tool. 

This is what sleep apnea is all about, getting the airways open so we get enough oxygen into our lungs, and a pulse oxymeter enables us to make sure all is well.