I was diagnosed with OSA in 2009. Getting CPAP was a life-changer for a while. I lost a lot of weight I had put on. I did keep having residual daytime sleepiness. My doctors pointed fingers at each other ("It's sleep apnea!" "It's depression!"). Finally, my sleep doctor gave me a trial of Provigil, which made me feel terrible. Then he said to just drink a lot of caffeine instead. He left the practice, and the whole place shut down. My sleep got much worse, and I put on weight. By luck, my PCP switched me to Dr. Robert Thomas, who found that I was having centrals as well, which probably explained the sleepiness. I know have an ASV machine, but have to take Acetazolamide and Clonazepam at night, and Ritalin during the day. (I can't drink caffeine anymore, it makes me sick, so the original doctor's plan is out the window). Ritalin makes me grind my teeth horribly. We tried Provigil again, with the same results, and Nuvigil, which was slightly less horrible. We're probably going to try a different Ritalin-type medication to see if it's any better. I hate having to take so much medication, but I can function again, and I'm able to lose weight again, which makes me think my sleep, while not perfect, is more restorative than it had been. And my depression is non-existent when I am rested. We think I may have had mild apnea for a long time and it was never diagnosed because it just looked like depression. That might explain why no depression meds worked for me.
I think they cut to the chase faster. Definitely more easily digestible, and less to sift through. Seeing where I fit into the grand scheme of people reporting is interesting, but I'm not always sure what to do with that information. I know from various doctors that I am younger and not as heavy as a lot of people with sleep apnea, so in a sense I feel like I'm already an outlier in some ways. I think since everyone is different, how we respond to treatment is very individualized. I have had a fairly difficult path to get to where I am in my treatment (first being diagnosed with obstructive, not being heard about continuing tiredness, finally after years of complaints and multiple doctors/suppliers finding out I also have centrals), while others may have had easier or harder times. I feel like the individual stories might be more useful to me to hear than demographics, for example. But others might be looking to see where they fit in.
I think they're definitely clearer, or at least more concise. As a starting point, they're good, and then if people want more they can dig into the more detailed ones.
If I was sure of what I should do with them, I would use them. It's a lot of information, so I can see how it would be useful, but I'm not sure how they're useful to me. (I imagine it's quite helpful to the researchers.)
I think as a snapshot of "here's where you fit into all this" they're good. Maybe a little guidance as to how this can aid us in our treatment would be useful.
Before I got a heated hose, I made a scarf for my tube out of an old pantleg and some velcro. Wrapping the fabric around the tube helped keep it warmer, and prevented the rainout. I think you can buy this sort of thing, but I had a pair of old pants and velcro handy, and I didn't care if it looked nice as long as it got the job done.
My new machine does not have a heated hose, but if I pull most of the hose under the covers with me, that helps as well. If the machine is lower than your head, the rainout from the exposed part of the hose drips back into the reservoir.
Interestingly enough, we figured out that there were issues with my apnea treatment because I gained 20 pounds. I had had success counting calories, and then all of a sudden I stopped losing weight, and then it creeped upward, until I had gained it back over the course of a year. After getting tested for a huge number of issues with my Primary Care doctor, he thought it might be related to my sleep apnea. I went for another sleep study (actually, several, but that's another story). It was then discovered that I had central apneas as well as obstructive. Now that we're treating that, I've been able to lose weight again, though we're still tweaking.
