Any Tips/Tricks/Recommendations

[KatesDad81]

Hi all. My name is Tom and my wife is Janelle. We are new to the site. Our daughter was diagnosed with sleep apnea and given an APAP, ResMed AirSense10 with built in humidifier, heated hose, and the Pixi Mask. She is 5 years old, tonsils removed, adenoids out, sleep study, had 14 events per hour, and was put on the APAP.

I am looking for any suggestions on how to approach this in the best way possible to make it work for her and give her a good nights sleep.

I also would like an explanation of what the "Usage Hours" actually means. She had it on for 7 hours last night, yet the machine spits out a report that says Usage Hours were 3 hrs 26 min.

Any help is appreciated. Glad to be in this together with all of you.

Thank You

[PoolQ]

Your in a good place here. Lots of good, experienced people. The good news is that CPAP does work and you have good equipment, most of the time it does take work to get everything set up correctly because a lot of it is personal preference.
So you have treatment settings that will take care of the apnea, then you have what tends to be called comfort settings that make a person willing to use the treatment. Without the comfort settings being set right, people tend to not want to use the CPAP.

No one that has not used CPAP before knows how to describe what needs to be changed. I have had times when I could swear that I could not breath and at the same time I knew that I was actually breathing. Some changes that you make will help your daughter to feel better and some will make her feel worse, some will do nothing at all. All of this may also change, one change can effect another.

I would strongly suggest that you get a SD card reader, they are all over the web and in many stores-industry standard and install the sleepyhead software (free) so you can see how she is doing while she is asleep. What this can't do is tell you how comfortable she is. Does she like low or high humidity? Air temperature? Does she have trouble falling asleep when the machine is at pressure? Does she have trouble exhaling into pressure? Small changes with trial and error. Is that better? No? change the other direction and try that.

With the software you can see if she had any apneas overnight. You can tell if she was restless. You can tell if the mask came lose. I doubt that she snores, but you could tell that also

Read threads where people say something is bothering them and the advice they were given. Read the sleepyhead thread in the top sticky section, my guess is you will be posting some plots for advice.

Like I said you are in the right place, your daughter has the right equipment and it works.

[MarylandCPAPer]

If your computer already has an SD card reader, you can get data on how your daughter's sleep is going using free software that you can download, Sleepyhead and/or Rescan. Then you lock the SD card, put in the computer, and you can download the data and see graphs and statistics on many aspects of treatment. When you take the SD card out, unlock it and put it back in the machine.

The clock may be set wrong on the machine, so it may not have counted the entire night's sleep as one night. If you sign up for "My Air" online and your machine is set to send data to the DME and Resmed automatically, you can get some very general data from the My Air site.Sleepyhead and Rescan give you much more detailed data.

It is quite an accomplishment that your daughter slept the first night for 7 hours using the machine and mask. I use the same machine as your daughter, as many of us do. It is one of the best and newest machines of its type.

If your daughter expresses any particular concerns about how the mask feels or how her breathing feels while using APAP, this is a good place to find answers. It is important that treatment be as comfortable as possible, as well as effective. Sounds like a great start so far.

It would be helpful if you would fill out the Equipment Profile using text, not pictures, under the Control Panel above. You could add your daughter's pressure setting or range under comments. The equipment profile and comments will attach to the bottom of each message you post, which speeds up the process of getting answers specific to your daughter's treatment.

[Julie]

Machine clocks usually run from noon to noon, so will show the night's results up until then, but start a new day afterward, and if some of your sleep occurs after noon of a given day, it will be counted towards that night's (anticipated) sleep, not the previous night's.

[rachelp]

It's not life or death but I really find using aromatherapy makes the whole sleep therapy so much more enjoyable. They have tons of different scents and you put a drop or two on a round cotton disk or a cotton ball and put it near the air intake.

[Hang Fire]

I would strongly suggest that you get a SD card reader

Get an SD card reader???

Most computers made in the last five years have them built in.

[ChicagoGranny]

She is 5 years old

This is not something for you to act on now, but for future consideration. When your daughter is seven, you should have a consultation with an orthodontist who is experienced and skilled with children who have sleep apnea. You want an orthodontist who is skilled in using the latest techniques to widen palates and expand jaws.

There is a good chance that the proper orthodontic treatment can improve the anatomy/widen the airway to the point that the airway is no longer subject to collapse and your daughter will no longer need CPAP.

Generally, this is not done until all the baby teeth are gone and the permanent teeth (except for wisdom teeth) are set in around ages 11-12 for girls. However, depending on the exact situation, the type of jaw/palate expanding referred to here is sometimes started while the child still has baby teeth. A second round of orthodontics is then applied once the permanent teeth are set it.

[PoolQ]

I would strongly suggest that you get a SD card reader

Get an SD card reader???

Most computers made in the last five years have them built in.

Well that's interesting as our family has 3 of them and none have SD card readers, all name brand laptops. Then of course there are the desk top computers in addition to the laptops that I have never seen any come standard with them.

I assume that if they already have one, they would not go out and buy one. The point was to be able to use sleepyhead. "and install the sleepyhead software (free) so you can see how she is doing while she is asleep"

[Susie Kay]

Well that's interesting as our family has 3 of them and none have SD card readers, all name brand laptops.

I wonder what you bought?

The last two times we bought computers we got away from the idea that you need to buy highly rated models. Since we mostly use browsers and don't watch videos or play video games, we bought cheap laptops.

One of our laptops is four years old and the laptop I am using now is three years old. Both have built-in SD card readers. What with SD cards in smart phone and cameras, the built-in SD card reader is a requirement.

Are you sure your computers don't have them? The openings are tiny and you can overlook them.

[PoolQ]

Doesn't really mater, I use a desktop gaming machine to run sleepyhead on and an $8 card reader to start with, but now I have a WiFi SD card so I don't even need a reader anymore. I guess I should have just said "If you don't already have a card reader, get one and use sleepyhead to monitor your daughters treatment" I just figured that if they already had a card reader, that they would not buy another one. It just did not seem that complicated to me.

[yaconsult]

I think sd card readers in laptops are becoming less popular as there are more different kind of ports needed, but it doesn't matter. There are plenty of sd card readers available on amazon for less than $10 that you can plug into any usb port. So just pick up one of those.

[Janknitz]

She is 5 years old

This is not something for you to act on now, but for future consideration. When your daughter is seven, you should have a consultation with an orthodontist who is experienced and skilled with children who have sleep apnea. You want an orthodontist who is skilled in using the latest techniques to widen palates and expand jaws.

There is a good chance that the proper orthodontic treatment can improve the anatomy/widen the airway to the point that the airway is no longer subject to collapse and your daughter will no longer need CPAP.

Generally, this is not done until all the baby teeth are gone and the permanent teeth (except for wisdom teeth) are set in around ages 11-12 for girls. However, depending on the exact situation, the type of jaw/palate expanding referred to here is sometimes started while the child still has baby teeth. A second round of orthodontics is then applied once the permanent teeth are set it.

Ditto this. My daughter and I have a genetic disorder that includes a small and retracted lower jaw (micrognathia) and a high, arched and narrow palate. She had orthodontia that widened the palate, broadened her arches and brought the lower jaw forward for a nice, open airway. The first stage started around age 7.

Under NO circumstances should you allow anyone to pull adult teeth tho "make room" in her mouth. That will cause a more narrow airway. Run, don't walk, from anyone who suggests it!!!

[chunkyfrog]

I wonder if Karen at Pad-a-Cheek has a mask liner for the Pixie.
It would not hurt to ask.

[ChicagoGranny]

Under NO circumstances should you allow anyone to pull adult teeth tho "make room" in her mouth. That will cause a more narrow airway. Run, don't walk, from anyone who suggests it!!!

+1

a genetic disorder that includes a small and retracted lower jaw (micrognathia) and a high, arched and narrow palate.

So sorry for that.

Note, it is also the case that a modern diet of soft foods, lack of infant breastfeeding and other factors has caused so very many of us to have underdeveloped jaws which cause narrow airways that collapse easily. There are also some issues with allergies and repeated nasal infections during the early years which cause long periods of mouthbreathing which contributes to failure of the jaw/palate/airway to become well developed.