First and Second Night Experience

I would like to preface this by saying that I've been a heavy snorer for 7 years. Over the years I've tried dozens of devices to stop snoring and I'm very used to having contraptions on my face or in my mouth. Having a CPAP full face mask on is not a big deal to me and I do not need to adjust to sleeping with something on my face.

I visited the doctor a few months ago in a second attempt to have my snoring surgically fixed. I had previously had surgery about 10 years ago and it was successful for a few years, but it slowly started returning and is now worse than ever. After the physical exam, my ENT suggested that I try a few different pills and treatments, all of which had zero effect. I went along with the recommendations because my insurance will not cover surgery unless all other options don't work. After the failed medicinal treatments, he suggested I have a second sleep study. The first one I'd had years ago showed no apnea whatsoever. I was annoyed and figured the next one would be the same. However, this was a take-home study and was much easier on me.

The Sleep study found that I stopped breathing about 34 times per hour for an average duration of 20 seconds. So basically, for every hour, I only breathe half the time. I was quite surprised since I didn't really feel that I didn't sleep well. Just snored so bad my wife kicked me out of the bed. (I've actually been sleeping in my 'man cave' for 5+ years in the basement).

My insurance wouldn't cover a titration test, so I was given an Auto CPAP machine to try (Dreamstation). I was also given a Dreamwear full face mask since I tend to switch between mouth and nose breathing. The first night I tried it, I fell right to sleep and did not wake up once throughout the night. I woke up feeling awesome without the usual headache and dry mouth/nose that I am used to. According to the machine though, my AHI was 27 though. Mask fit was at 100%.

The second night, I went to put on my mask and found one of the magnetic clips missing. I assume my cat got to it and it is now lost in one of her hiding spots. I jerry-rigged the mask but found it was still fairly loose. I went to sleep and had a decent night, but woke up when the mask came loose and the wind noise woke me up. In the morning, the results showed the mask fit was 82%, but my AHI was listed at 7. Again, I felt great! I also recorded myself for the last two nights with the SnoreLab app and found both nights to be listed as quiet (around 22dbs) when I am normally EPIC (around 80-100dbs).

I ordered the magnetic clip from Amazon and hopefully it will be here in two days. I can't believe how great I feel though. What started as a search for a snore-remedy has made me realize just how bad my sleeping has been for the last few years.

I hope everyone can find a good fit and get used to their CPAPs. I look forward to perusing the forum for advice on cleaning and care.

Welcome to the "club". It sounds like you will do well with a CPAP. The only little bit of concern would be that your AHI did not come down a little more on your first couple of nights. You may want to look at the detail of your apnea events and determine what portion of your AHI is CA or central apnea compared to what portion is OA or obstructive events plus H, hypopnea. CA events do not respond so well to CPAP. Another thing to consider is downloading SleepyHead so you can view your detailed data on your computer. SleepyHead requires a PC or Mac plus a SD card reader so it can reade the data stored on the SD card.

The basic goal of CPAP treatment is to get an AHI under 5, but lower is better, if you can do it comfortably.

The vast majority of the apneas are Obstructive. The machine is set up to slowly up the air pressure to give me time to adjust to using a cpap. I think they call it EZ Start. I'm going to wait until I'm outside the EZ Start period before I really worry about performance. Thank you for the info!