Can't wake up in the morning

Recently diagnosed with sleep apnea, score of 17. Have been using cpap ResMed airsense 10 with Fisher & Paykel Simplus face mask for about 9 days now. Prior to starting to use cpap I would wake up, feel alert, go to work and then start to have excessive drowsiness while working (sitting at computer) and would actually drop off to sleep, could not hold my eyes open. This went on for years until I went to dr and got dx and started cpap. I know there is a period of adjustment, am used to pressure, getting more comfortable sleeping with it, my only complaint is it makes me hot so have a fan blowing on my head. The positives are: no more headaches when I wake up and no more nasal congestion! The not so good: hard for me to wake up in the morning, have brain fog that seems to last all day. I'm not dropping off or fighting to stay awake at work but I don't feel alert or like I ever wake up. On the My Air site is shows good air seal, at least 7 hours of use, scores over 90. I can't understand why when I wasn't using cpap I would wake up and be very alert and awake and then go to work and fight staying awake and now with cpap, I don't feel like I can "wake up" and I'm certainly not alert? Do I just need to keep being patient and give it more time? Coffee is not even helping. Thanks.

It is possible that you are now actually sleeping at night and in the morning you may be coming out of a deep sleep rather than a very light aleep. This would be something for your body to adjust to. The fact that you are more alert during the day is a good indicator of just that. I had a very hard time waking up the first couple or few weeks on my machine. I even slept through alarms which never had happened in my life! Give yourself more time! You're doing great! As far as the heat goes... I'm not sure what to say. Good luck!

I agree! Keep up the good work, and see if your brain fog improves with time. If, after a couple of more weeks, you are still feeling this same lack of alertness, I encourage you to talk to your physician. Now that you think the sleep apnea is under control, there may be other factors causing you to feel the way you describe (medication, other health conditions, etc.). You physician will likely also monitor your compliance, and that data should alert him or her to whether there are other breathing issues going on. Keep us posted on your progress, and best wishes!

Thanks, will try to be patient and hope for improvement!

A couple of things:

1. Using one number to judge sleep IMO is ... let's just say not the best idea. Use your judgment about daily functioning, regardless of the numbers. For me, I can be a zombie with an AHI under 2 -- but if my sleep fragmentation was bad the night before, the next day functioning is definitely impaired: I've been tracking this for over 6 months in specific fashion now.
2. I am not entirely certain of this but I have been told that once you start on the PAP, you are having some sort of make-up sleep, may have rebound REM (again, not sure of the terminology), and your sleep architecture (what stage you're in, at any given point of time) changes. So as another responder above said, it may be that now you are in deeper sleep at get-up time, and that certainly can make you feel groggy. Brain fog, on the other hand, that lasts all day, is a separate issue.

I would suggest, if you are so inclined, to download SleepyHead software, and read the data on your SD card in SleepyHead. That will give you a much, much better idea of what is actually going on in your sleep than the software your PAP company gives you. In conjunction with my ResMed device, I am also using a separate device called SleepImage, and this week am tracking the data from that with the data in SleepyHead to sort out a few remaining issues.

Good luck with this -- come back and let us know how it's going, and I wouldn't wait too very long for improvement. A few weeks, a month, and you should be seeing SOME sort of betterment, IMO.