Category: Generic

Apps Like a Boss

My shiny new CPAP machine just told me that I had 1.9 apnea events per hour last night.  That’s down from the 80 or so I had at my sleep study.  So yeah, I think it might be working.  Jen told me I didn’t snore at all.  I call that a pair of wins.

There was the little matter of me feeling pretty exhausted all day today.  I’m optimistic that I just need to catch up for a few days before that gets better too.

I was prompted to register my shiny new CPAP machine on the manufacturers website today.  Starting tomorrow I should be able to track my sleep on their website and on their groovy iOS app.  Jen also suggested, just for shnitzengiggles, I set myself up with an iOS sleep app to read the health data from my Apple Watch.  Granted I will have to wear my watch to sleep for it to work, but I’m kinda curious now.

We’ll see how we do tonight.

Welcome to my journey, where I will be asleep through the whole thing.

First Night

I did it.  I used the CPAP machine last night.  Did it help?  I have no idea.  My wife said I didn’t snore, so that’s a win.  Did I sleep better?  We’ll see, I guess.  It was definitely harder to fall asleep, but I expected that.  They told me it would take a while to get used to the thing, and they are right so far.  I put the mask on, turned on the machine, checked the seal, everything was good.  Then I laid down and… nothing.  Am I breathing too hard?  Too fast?  Too slow?  Am I doing something wrong?  Hey Robert, hows about you stop over thinking your breathing and just fall asleep.  One thing that bothered me was there were a few occasions when the seal didn’t hold.  I would move my mouth in the wrong way and a gap would pop open somewhere.  Also, there were two times when I moved my head, I think I was rolling over onto my side, and it seemed to spring a leak above my nose.  Suddenly there was air blowing into my eyes.  I just took off the mask, and restarted the machine and it was fine again.

When I did the overnight test in the hospital a couple of months ago I put the mask on, laid down, and an instant later it was morning.  I was kinda hoping that would happen again.  Maybe it will in the future.  We’ll see.

I’ll keep you all in the loop.  All, like… three of you.

One Day Delay

I had my CPAP appointment yesterday.  I was trained on using it… sort of.  It occurred to me later that I don’t think they actually showed me how to start it.  Whoops.  Also, I never put the mask on myself.  That was probably an oversight too.  I think I may have just really wanted to get the hell out of there that my ability to ask good questions was M.I.A.  They did tell me that youtube has a lot of good instructional videos.

They also told me that I need to fill the humidifier section with distilled water… and we don’t have any distilled water.  So I didn’t get to use the thing last night.  I’ll get some today after I finish all of my yard work, and we’ll be good to go tonight.

They reviewed my sleep study with me, and that was a tad surprising.  I went into this assuming I had sleep apnea.  I know the sleep study confirmed, and noted that it was severe.  I didn’t know what that meant though, until now.

Sleep apnea is where you stop breathing while you’re asleep.  Something happens that blocks your airway.  You snap awake for an instant, your airway clears, and then you go back to sleep.  You are awake for such a short time that your brain doesn’t notice.  You think you slept through the night, but you actually woke up again and again all night long.

They told me that averaging 30 breathing events per hour is enough to qualify you for a breathing machine.  My study showed that I averaged more than 80 events per hour.  So the other day when I joked about my seven hours of sleep actually being one minute of sleep 420 times, that was better than the reality.  One of the long term treatments for this thing is weight loss, so maybe with 31 pounds less of me than when we did the study it wouldn’t be quite that bad… but 80 times per hour… that sucks.

Hopefully this machine will help and I will actually get into all of the different sleep stages.  Maybe I’ll even dream.  Granted, the mask covers my mouth and nose and seals tight so that I can’t even hear myself when I try to talk and when the machine starts up it feels like I’m suffocating and for the first time in my life I know what claustrophobia feels like… but maybe I’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep for a change.