Is Apnea forever?

[BlackSpinner]

Compared to testing your blood and shooting up insulin 4 times a day Xpap therapy is a breeze.

[Slartybartfast]

Is apnea forever? Your last one is.

There's lots worse conditions to have. A friend just had his colon removed. He's bumbed. Another friend lost most of his sight. He was bumbed, too. My dad's having trouble with dementia. He's bumbed, too.

You can live with it. It's minor compared to what COULD have happened. Gird up your loins and keep moving.

[Otter]

As I lose weight I expect to be able to reduce my pressure. But I had SDB before I was overweight, so I'll probably be on the hose the rest of my life, or until someone comes up with something better. Weight loss plus playing the didgeridoo every day? Well, maybe. I'll give it a try.

[TalonNYC]

I'm with Otter, I need to lose weight, and I understand that, but I recognize some of the symptoms of apnea from way before I was this heavy. Yes, the extra weight is making things a lot worse for me, but when I lose it, I won't be free of apnea, I'll just be able to use a lower pressure.

If your apnea is completely caused by added weight, then of course losing the weight will fix the problem, but from what I've seen, that's rare. Maybe you can get your AHI numbers down low enough to only need a dental device or other treatment, so there's always hope.

In the meantime, think of this as long-term treatment. It will treat the problem immediately, and keep treating it until you either 1 - might be lucky enough to get your AHI down below 10 by weight loss alone or 2 - a better treatment option comes along (and is PROVEN to work).

hang in there!

[robysue]

There's lots worse conditions to have. A friend just had his colon removed. He's bumbed. Another friend lost most of his sight. He was bumbed, too. My dad's having trouble with dementia. He's bumbed, too.

Thanks for the reminder. In my darkest moments last fall, I kept trying to remind myself that in spite of all my problems, there were plenty of folks much worse off than I was.

Still, OSA is a serious, chronic condition that typically deteriorates (without treatment). And for many of us---particularly those who were largely asymptomatic---the OSA diagnosis is our first real encounter with our own mortality. And that's why it takes some of us more time mentally to get to a point where we can genuinely believe heart and soul that Slartybarfast is correct when he says:

You can live with it. It's minor compared to what COULD have happened. Gird up your loins and keep moving.

[georgepds]

...Still, OSA is a serious, chronic condition that typically deteriorates (without treatment). And for many of us---particularly those who were largely asymptomatic---the OSA diagnosis is our first real encounter with our own mortality.

I don't mean to minimize the potential difficulties with Apnea, but I just don't see it as that big a deal. It is one of those rare maladies where the treatment works, and if you use the treatment the problem goes away. I had the usual problems with the face mask when I started, but once I got used to it, my sleepiness int he afternoon went away.

Problem solved as I see it, next....

As to weight, I'm one of those who has a lot of weight to loose. I'm down 90 lbs, and need to loose another 90 to get down to a BMI of 25. When I loose the other 90 I'll go back and test again at the sleep center. Already I've noticed the problem has diminished. I can travel overnight without the device and not be exhausted in the afternoon. Mind you I'm not claiming a cure.. but for those of us who are really fat and have a lot to loose, loosing a lot of weight helps a lot

[robysue]

...Still, OSA is a serious, chronic condition that typically deteriorates (without treatment). And for many of us---particularly those who were largely asymptomatic---the OSA diagnosis is our first real encounter with our own mortality.

I don't mean to minimize the potential difficulties with Apnea, but I just don't see it as that big a deal. It is one of those rare maladies where the treatment works, and if you use the treatment the problem goes away. I had the usual problems with the face mask when I started, but once I got used to it, my sleepiness int he afternoon went away.

Problem solved as I see it, next....

Some of us literally struggle for months on end before the treatment "works" for us---in terms of daytime functioning. There are a few members here who have struggled for years making this therapy "work" and, while their AHI's are nice and low, they continue to have serious problems functioning in the daytime or serious problems with not-so-pleasant side effects such as aerophagia. There are also members here who struggle mightily just to try to get their AHI to consistently be below 5; many of them started off with a diagnosis of just plain old OSA, but subsequently the diagnosis was changed to CompSA. And sometimes with a change to a much more sophisticated machine, their sleep disordered breathing really is controlled, but some of them continue to struggle with issues of a high AHI and continued problems with daytime functioning. Sometimes they feel relatively better than they did before starting, but they still don't feel well or wake up refreshed or rested.

The amount of time and effort that I have put into the struggle of learning how to sleep with the hose on my nose continues to astonish me. And even now, I have a certain amount of genuine bona fide grief over losing the lifestyle that I once upon a time had and enjoyed pre-CPAP: In order to learn to sleep with this dang thing on my nose, I've had to make multiple serious, long term (and not at all pleasant) changes to my lifestyle. Changes that have only been mandated by the need to be able to sleep with the machine.

Yes, I'm an outlier: Most folks don't take the nose dive I did when I started xPAP. I went from functioning in the daytime with no sleepiness (but some pain and fatigue issues) to literally not being able to keep my eyes open during the daytime and not being able to get to sleep at night when I put the mask on my nose. I was a real basket case in terms of daytime functioning for the first four long months of therapy, in spite of my xPAP machine "curing" my OSA in the sense of reducing my AHI/RDI from 23.4 to consistently less than 2.0.

And I'm green with envy every time I read of someone like you who rather quickly adjusted to CPAP and started to feel better in a meaningful way in a relatively short period of time. But I'm now 11 months into therapy and I still get sleepy in the afternoon. And I didn't get sleepy then before CPAP---not on a regular basis like I do now. I do now feel some daytime benefits to using the machine, but that really only started to kick in a good 9 1/2 months after I started this adventure. And I still find it much harder to multitask in the daytime WITH sleeping with the mask than I ever did prior to starting therapy. And I miss that ability to multitask and juggle lots of details in my head instead of having to write every thing down just to remember it.

You go on to write:

As to weight, I'm one of those who has a lot of weight to loose. I'm down 90 lbs, and need to loose another 90 to get down to a BMI of 25. When I loose the other 90 I'll go back and test again at the sleep center. Already I've noticed the problem has diminished. I can travel overnight without the device and not be exhausted in the afternoon. Mind you I'm not claiming a cure.. but for those of us who are really fat and have a lot to loose, loosing a lot of weight helps a lot

I'm a 5'1" female who weighs about 110 pounds (on a heavy day). That's a BMI of 20.8. Weight has never been a factor in my OSA and I can't possibly hope to "cure" it by losing a lot of weight and keeping it off. Nope, I'm a hosehead for life whether I like it or not.

But the real point I want to make is this: The work that you've already done to lose 90 lbs is substantial; and you will continue to have to work hard getting the remaining 90 lbs of excess weight off. No doubt, you've had to work very hard for a substantial period of time to accomplish this worthy deed. And no doubt you've made, and continue to make, substantial changes to your life style---in terms of diet and exercise mostly, but likely affecting other areas of your life as well. The real question is: Can you maintain those changes in lifestyle over the years and decades to come. Because if you cannot, the weight will likely return (and so will the apnea).

The time and effort you've put in losing half of your excess 180 lbs of weight is similar to the time and effort I've had to put into mastering sleeping with xPAP. Four months of severe sleep deprivation due to severe insomnia caused by starting xPAP is not what sleep docs expect when you start xPAP, but that's what happened to me. And the effort to bring that insomnia under control has required close to 8 months of hard work and even now it's only marginally under control. And to get the insomnia under control, I've had to make (and continue to make) substantial and serious long term changes in my behavior and life style. And these changes will be as hard to maintain long term and as necessary to maintain long term as the changes you've made to lose the weight. Because if I fail to maintain all the lifestyle changes I've had to make in my efforts to sleep with the machine, the insomnia will return and rob me of the benefits of sleeping with the machine simply because it will rob me of sleeping altogether.

[ameriken]

I don't mean to minimize the potential difficulties with Apnea, but I just don't see it as that big a deal. It is one of those rare maladies where the treatment works, and if you use the treatment the problem goes away. I had the usual problems with the face mask when I started, but once I got used to it, my sleepiness int he afternoon went away.

Problem solved as I see it, next....

You don't see it as a big deal because maybe you have one of those rare maladies where the treatment works and the problem goes away. If I and many others had it so simple, we too would not see it as a big deal either. I wish it were that simple for me.

Like robysue said, some of us struggle, and I do. Not because of the therapy, but because of the potpourri of breathing issues I have. My breathing disorders are not so simple that I can slap on the mask and bingo, I feel great and "problem solved" as you say.

I am 100% compliant, I wear the mask every night, I sleep through every night, I rarely have problems with leaks, and have no issues with XPAP or the mask. Yet still my AHI's are up and down; I have many nights where my PTB's (patient triggered breathing) drops to zero for a while and it is only the machine that is keeping me going; there are times when I still wake up with a low O2 headache; many day where I still feel tired.

So count your blessings and understand that just because your breathing issue is so easily treatable, doesn't make it so for everyone else. I would love to be in your shoes.

[georgepds]

Sorry to those I may have offended by minimizing the disease

Of course the response to treatment is different in different cases.