My sister is extremely Chemically sensitive and the plastic from the hose and humidifier tank give her bad allergic reactions. When are the CPAP companies going to actually ADDRESS this issue, instead of just blowing off all the chemically sensitive population and just serve the higher percentage of patients who don't have this problem??? This problem is slowly killing her and they COULD do something about this for her and all the other patients with similiar problems but I believe they just WON'T because it's not cost effective for them. I'm sure everybody here is aware that just about anything can be accomplished in the field of medical equipment if the engineers are allowed to work on it long enough. They just need to be ALLOWED to do it. Something needs to be done to force them to care for everyone, not just the largest percentage of customers that can tolerate all this plastic in their face each night. This sucks!!!!
I use nasal pillows and they work well except occasionally I wake up with a dry mouth, especially if I sleep on my back, so I know I've been exhaling thru my mouth. Chin straps don't help because I can still breathe air out of my mouth thru my with my teesh clenched. My lips just pop open and let the air out. I can sense my self doing that once in a while. Fortunately my releasing air thru my mouth doesn't happen often enough to throw my numbers off according to my doctor when he reads my card.
My girlfriend has had a machine for a few months and has gone thru 3 full face masks without much luck in preventing leaks. She's about ready to give up. She tends to exhale thru her mouth when sleeping so nasal pillows aren't an option. The medical equipment techs that come out and show her masks are just "okay" at fitting them on her. They don't seem to really be much more than delivery guys. I feel a mask fitting should be done in a sleep study environment by professional techs until a mask is found that WORKS. This wondering thru masks process with these med device companies is a MAJOR hole in the process of getting therapy that works.
