singingkeys

I'm waiting to hear back from an employer that will be contacting me soon and then I'll be fine to spend some of the money that I have saved. I think I'm going to try the home sleep study because I really want to see if I can get better results than the in-lab that I had. I'll be at home in my own bed and won't have to worry about asking someone to go to the bathroom or "focusing" on sleeping - it will be almost like a regular night minus the equipment that will be a little uncomfortable. Also, if they send the unit to you and you don't feel that you got good results on that night, you can keep it for another night and try again before sending it back to them. Definitely can't do that one with an in-lab study. They will write me a prescription based on the results. I'm just really looking forward to trying to get some closure for this after all of this time. It actually seems like it is getting "worse" with time. I have days like yesterday and today where I sleep 8-10 hours and it feels like I just went to bed an hour ago and I get up just about to fall on my face tired. I woke up sleeping on my stomach this morning, but some nights it seems like sleeping on my stomach is also the same as on my back. I'm starting to wonder if I don't have a combination of both Central and OSA. I'm not just "tired" during the day, I'm jumpy-tired as in muscles don't want to work the way they should, reflexes are out of whack, etc. I'll see what the study results say and try the Air Sense...if I don't see any improvement with that over a reasonable time period, I guess I'll be checking with an immunologist or endocrinologist. I'm ready to punch my pillow some mornings and wake up "angry" because I feel so bad.

Well, it "was" mild OSA technically, but he made a big deal about the 4.7 AHI instead of 5.0 and kept quoting the stupid 0.3 difference that prevented him from officially diagnosing me. Meanwhile, that 18.1 is pretty high and those 50 combined events and RERA's were plain as day. The only thing was that my oxygen levels never dropped.

My only thing with a used one is how much I have read about catching other people's germs from them. I know that they can be "cleaned" somewhat...I'm just iffy about it. Every article that I've read seems to say to stay away from used.

Well, no insurance right now, anyway. I have some money saved, but my sleep doctor's office is being dumb and he wants another visit and still may not write me a prescription for CPAP/APAP. Getting quite frustrated with them and sleep seems to be getting worse.

It is basically a mail-order home sleep study. https://homesleep.study/

Apparently it is $299 with free shipping and they ship you this device called SleepView Monitor and the accessories to hook up overnight to do your own sleep study at home. Then you ship it back to them and sleep techs/doctors review it and email you the results. The whole process is supposed to take 7 days total, including the to/from shipping. Just wondering if anyone has tried this service in the past. If it is discovered that you have Sleep Apnea, then they contact you and assist you with getting APAP/CPAP equipment at a "significantly discounted price" somehow. The test is supposed to be able to diagnose Central and OSA.

I looked up said device and it is about $3,200, so definitely a higher-end one that is just made to be simple for patients. https://www.medicaldevicedepot.com/SleepView-Monitor-p/700-0011-1.htm

8 channels, so it checks for Respiratory Effort using a belt, body position, airflow (thermistor and pressure-based), snore (from the cannula), heart rate, pulse oximetry and actigraphy.

It would probably cost the $299 for me to go back for a visit with the sleep doctor "just to talk" for a third time and I no longer have the insurance that paid for a lot of the previous stuff and the sleep study. Think it is a better shot? They sure don't have much interest in my health.

So they have declined a prescription until I see the doctor for yet a third time. Saw him before my sleep study, after my sleep study to review results and then I had a surgery a few months after that and had to wait months to heal up from the surgery. He wants a third visit for some reason. Probably just wants more money instead of writing a prescription. My condition certainly didn't magically change.

I'll probably order the Swift FX headgear and the Fit Pack when I order the machine and accessories so that I'll have everything together at once. Very curious to see what my results will be after I get used to it and see if CPAP is going to help me or if I need to start looking at other things. I didn't even want to get up this morning. Alarm was set for 8am, but didn't get up until 10. Even after 10 hours of "sleeping"...I felt like I just went to bed an hour ago and was getting up. Even if I wake up just once halfway through the night for a bathroom trip, I just have that feeling that I haven't been sleeping for long at all. Same feeling every morning. It's so awful.

So they're finally, finally, FINALLY going to give me my prescription so that I can buy my own CPAP online from the place I want. They want $1,600 to $1,800 for the Air Sense 10 at the sleep clinic. Found it online for 1/3 of that price and will probably be about $800 or so with everything else that I need with it. I'm going to try to get the For Her version, as well, for the lower pressure setting.

Which mask? A long time ago when I was first considering it, I asked about it, but I can't find the post now. Is the AirFit P10 any good? I see something Philips puts out called Dreamwear, as well. Looking for whatever will have the least amount of stuff going around my head, too.

Of course, like so many...I'd like to find the most comfortable and quietest one. Just as a reminder, 4.7 AHI and 50 total events of just under 3 hours. 18.1 RDI. So if that was correct from my sleep study a long time ago, I'm on the mild end. No notably drops in SPO2. I also want the machine to kind of do my own sleep tests and also see how it makes me feel in the mornings. If it doesn't seem to be working out, I'll keep looking into it with other options. Blood work was done previously, so nothing wrong was found. Brain scan, neurologist, etc. Nothing wrong found. Minor essential tremor and I feel my body "moving" some nights when I get extra tired. A few extra hypnogogic jumps here and there, but I don't think that happens while I'm sleeping. Just when drifting off to sleep. I still feel absolutely awful and drained of energy every morning. UARS and/or my tongue falling back.

So what say you regarding the "best" mask to get starting out? P10?

I had 4.7 AHI on my sleep study with 50 breathing events over 2.75 hours for the whole study. Unclassified events. No significant drops in SPO2 both in the study and in my own checks at home with my SPO2 monitor at home. All night showed that my levels only drop down to low to mid 90's on average and seem to stay consistent around 94/95. If I do stop breathing completely, it isn't for long enough to significantly drop my SPO2 levels on the sleep study or SPO2 monitor throughout the night.

So basically there have been certain nights and mornings when I was actually asleep, but somehow my brain as awake the second I started making an odd sound. Every time I hear this fairly loud and unique sound that wakes me up, I instantly think it is me "air puffing" out of the very far right corner of my lips like I'm blowing a kazoo or something. Just that tiny little area maybe 0.25 inches is where the air comes out in the corner. My lips do not blow out anywhere else. However, as soon as I wake up and try to reproduce that sound that I thought was air puffing out of the corner of my lips, it never sounds like what I've heard. I've awaken before when it felt like my throat was partially closed over and I could tell the strain in trying to breathe when I woke up. Even though I was awake, my body was still physically asleep/tired to the point where I could close my eyes and drift off to sleep while feeling my tongue slowly fall back to the back of my throat until I could actually make it relax and close over my airway completely. I'm starting to suspect my tongue and the noise may be either gasping awake when it shuts over completely or the breathing causing a noise right before my tongue shuts over the airway completely. My tongue is pretty big/wide and gets even wider when I get teeth marks all the way around it and it swells up a little because I'm probably pressing it down a lot into my teeth to get it out of the way of my throat when I'm sleeping.

I'm still working on getting my APAP prescription for the Air Sense 10. I've looked online for various methods to keep the tongue in place and attempt to verify that it is in fact my tongue. They have suction devices that go on the end of the tongue to grip it all night. That can't be comfortable. A lot of people said their tongue actually stretched out, got sore and made the problem worse than before using the device. I know that APAP will most likely fix this and I'll know soon enough when I try it. Apart from the dental device (I don't want that because it moves teeth a lot and I've had a lot of previous dental work), does anything else exist that one can put into the mouth to keep the tongue from falling back? Like some kind of mouth guard with a tongue depresser or something? Just wondering if I'm all out of options for that. What has worked for those of you with a big tongue? I'm still open to the possibility that I may have UARS, but my nasal airways seem pretty clear and my tongue has been a culprit since my youth with those teeth marks all the way around. Since I was a kid, canker sores frequently developed directly in the center of the teeth marks on my tongue. That's the area that basically got wedged in between whatever two teeth that part of the tongue came into contact with and sometimes this was in 2-3 places on different sides of the tongue. It isn't specific teeth, the marks go all the way around and are sometimes a full set of both top and bottom teeth. Almost always the full bottom and sometimes marks from the top. Oddly enough, when I mentioned it the other day, my mother noted that she thinks she has a pretty big tongue, too. I don't think she has issues with sleeping, however. I guess it is just genetic or something?

I'm still working on getting the prescription for an APAP. It's kind of like getting Congress to approve a law and jump through hoops. When I can get the challenged people at the sleep clinic to finally get me a prescription for APAP, I'll post the results from Sleepyhead. In the meantime, I have noticed that on certain nights when I'm just flat out exhausted, sometimes I wake myself up a few times due to hearing the sound of me blowing air out of the corner of my lips. Not just a little bit, but pretty heavily, like full breaths. This only happens when I'm laying on my back.

My common sense makes me curious if this happens because the airway in the nasal/ area upper throat shuts off for a very short time period and basically forces the air out of the mouth instead because that's the only other place for it to go to escape on the exhale. Pretty sure that this probably happens more often than just a few times throughout the night and I'm wondering if anyone knows any direct correlation between sleep apnea or sleep disorders in general and heavy mouth puffing.

I know that some people on APAP/CPAP have this happen and they tape their mouths and such. What about people who do it naturally? Is it just something that happens or even more of an indicate of sleep apnea?

Yes, and they form right where the "ridges" are on the tongue that are caused by the marks from in between the teeth. Both sides of the tongue, as well as the top edges all the way around for both.