Did you feel instantly better?

[adrianne]

I was diagnosed with severe OSA in a disastrous sleep study in Nov 2009. I just hated the whole thing, could not sleep, wasn't comfortable, etc. I had a titration study done at a different sleep center in March 2010 and was prescribed a CPAP which until this last week pretty much just collected dust. I finally got sick and tired of being tired all the time and made it sort of a new year's resolution to make a solid effort to use the CPAP.

First night was miserable - I spent about 4 hours with the machine on in a sort of half asleep/half awake situation. I eventually fell asleep for about 2.5 hours. Since then I have adjusted mask tightness, upped humidifier settings and just got used to breathing normally with the CPAP on. I've had 3 full, successful nights of CPAP therapy. I don't know if I feel any better yet. I see people on the internet saying they instantly felt amazing - I still wake up feeling tired. I'm going to stick with it, but someone please tell me it gets better.

[TalonNYC]

It DOES get better. Very few of us felt wonderful on the very first night. I know I felt horrific! However, over time, and with dedication, it gets easier to sleep with CPAP therapy, and your life gets better as you sleep properly.

A few things to keep in mind:
1 - get help. This forum is a great place to go for support and advice, so you're on the right track
2 - don't stop. You sleep with sheets, blankets, a mattress, and probably pajamas of some kind, but your brain edits them out and you don't notice them. With time, your brain will edit out the pressure and mask as well. The more you don't use the CPAP, the longer that process takes.
3 - it's a journey, not a race. For most of us, sleep apnea ruled our lives for DECADES! It could take a little while to recover from that =)

But it does get better. For me it took a few weeks, but then I started feeling the difference. I had to try a few different masks, I got a lot of help from the folks here, but I felt a huge difference over time. Hang in there.

[MaxDarkside]

I'm pretty much a newbie. I felt a bit better the first night, but noticeably after a week, then muchly after a month and now I'm into this (only) 7 weeks and I feel a lot better. I'm still groggy during the day but I think it's because I'm catching up on quality sleep that I missed out on for years, maybe even decades. If I only consider the last three years and since I had a sleep study sleep efficiency of 51%, I have 4,000+ hours of sleep to catch up on !! Hang in there. Attitude is critical. Think of this as breathing life back into you.

[chunkyfrog]

I can't honestly say that I felt better right away.
The first few weeks were spent with gradual, tiny improvements that were barely noticeable.
Then one day, I suddenly realized that I felt DIFFERENT!
Better, clearer-headed, no longer weepy or owly, I had more stamina, walking way farther without stopping to rest.
The big energy improvement came about after I lost weight;
but I would have never been able to do that in an untreated, exhausted state.

[adrianne]

Thanks all for the encouragement.

Chunkyfrog - can I ask what route you went to lose weight? My doc recommended CPAP therapy because my body has been completely resistant to losing and she said that proper sleep could help my metabolism???

[BlackSpinner]

I was diagnosed with severe OSA in a disastrous sleep study in Nov 2009. I just hated the whole thing, could not sleep, wasn't comfortable, etc. I had a titration study done at a different sleep center in March 2010 and was prescribed a CPAP which until this last week pretty much just collected dust. I finally got sick and tired of being tired all the time and made it sort of a new year's resolution to make a solid effort to use the CPAP.

First night was miserable - I spent about 4 hours with the machine on in a sort of half asleep/half awake situation. I eventually fell asleep for about 2.5 hours. Since then I have adjusted mask tightness, upped humidifier settings and just got used to breathing normally with the CPAP on. I've had 3 full, successful nights of CPAP therapy. I don't know if I feel any better yet. I see people on the internet saying they instantly felt amazing - I still wake up feeling tired. I'm going to stick with it, but someone please tell me it gets better.

Life felt a bit brighter the first morning.
However you have been short changing your body and beating it up for ... how many years? If you broke a leg you wouldn't expect to run a marathon or climb a mountain the next week.

[Pugsy]

A few lucky people do seem to feel better immediately. I think those people are very lucky and rare.
Most people say they felt better gradually over a long period of time. That was the way I happened to be..I thought for sure with my attitude and all I knew I would be an immediate success...alas, it didn't work out that way. It took me months even after I used the software to figure out my pressure wasn't quite where it needed to be.

So my usual thoughts for someone who doesn't feel like they are doing as well as they hoped.
Get the software...check out my signature line for your options. You have a full data machine..utilize the data to make sure that things are at least going well on paper.
Give it some time and remember that other things can make us feel crappy.
Hours using the machine and hours of sleep using the machine are critical.
Fragmented sleep for any reason will mess with how we feel.
Insomnia, meds, pain, general health and even bed comfort can all mess with how we feel.
The machine helps fix the OSA and doesn't help with the other stuff. So make sure the machine is doing things as best it can....give it time...and also investigate other things which can cause us to feel lousy.

[spanielman]

When asked how my CPAP was working after a couple of weeks my reply was " the jury is still WAY out". Now 16 months in I can only say that the feeling good comes gradually, a bit at a time. You will just realize one day soon that it has "happened". Stick with it.

[robysue]

I felt like total crap the first three months on CPAP----far, far worse than I did before starting CPAP in fact. But I had mild daytime symptoms at worst before I stated CPAP and I'm someone who is very highly sensitive to sensory stimuli and sensory overload is a major cause of my chronic headaches. And this combination set me up for a much steeper learning curve than many (most?) new CPAPers have.

But I stuck with PAP therapy for a whole bunch of reasons. And the help and support I found here at cpaptalk.com was critically important in my being able to stick with PAP therapy during those very, very dark months after starting therapy.

And slowly, but surely things started to turn around in months 4 and 5---which was after I declared all out war on my CPAP-induced insomnia, with the help of a PA in my (then) sleep doc's office. By the end of month 5, I was occasionally waking up feeling "somewhat rested and somewhat refreshed"---i.e. I was finally back to how I felt pre-CPAP in terms of feeling rested and refreshed. But very significantly and very unexpectedly, it was also around this time that I noticed that I was now waking up pain free----in the sense that the daily pain in my hands and feet that I woke up with every morning had magically disappeared.

Very slow improvement with lots of "two steps forward, one step back" type progress continued for the next several months.

And sometime during month 8 or 9 of therapy, I finally started to notice that I was waking up feeling better than I had pre-CPAP on most days and certainly no worse on even my worst days on CPAP. On my best days I wake up feeling much younger than I did during the last pre-CPAP year. I still don't have enough of these days (but then I still have insomnia issues as well). But at this point, I no longer dread going to bed with the mask on my nose and I fully expect that most mornings I'll wake up feeling like I really have gotten some nice quality sleep and I do indeed feel pretty rested and even sometimes actually out-and-out-right refreshed when I wake up.

So yes, it does get better---if you are committed to making it work and if you committed to wearing the mask all night, every night even during the early, dark days where it seems as if nothing is working as it is supposed to work.

[chunkyfrog]

I sent you a (lengthy) PM.

[RocketGirl]

One of the things I wish I had done was keep a journal for a while pre-CPAP, just to document how completely rotten I felt. But even though I didn't do that, I am aware that the improvement I've had has been incremental. No sudden "Eureka, I'm well!" but a whole lot of "Hey, I have energy today, cool."

Pre-CPAP I was hitting the wall every day by 2pm and most days, I'd have to leave work early because I genuinely could not stay conscious.

I didn't wake up after the first night on CPAP and feel suddenly amazing, but I did notice that the wall was gone. And the wall has stayed gone. That was the first thing - enough energy to get through a normal day without strain or concern for driving safety.

I also felt an infinite need for sleep at first, which I happily indulged. I gave in to it because I clearly needed the sleep (and what a remarkable thing, to lie down and actually sleep soundly after decades of not being able to). Three months into the journey, that sleepiness is just now beginning to dissipate.

And only this week I suddenly did realize that I have enough energy and enough lessening of pain to walk the dog. (That's major, let me tell you!)

So - for me, small but really important successes right away, and a slow but steady improvement trend thereafter.

[DaZone]

Hi, I was diagnosed with severe OSA ... AHI was 67. I'm only on week two of using a ResMdes S9 VPAP Auto, and it takes a while to get used to the mask, etc. For the last three days I've woken up before the alarm went off, in the middle of very vivid dreams, and felt much more rested right away, and all day. This was with 5-6 hours of sleep, which is fairly typical for me. So I'm seeing definite improvement very quickly. I sleep with earplugs, because I'm a light sleeper, which helps with the CPAP/mask noise. Sure nice to dream again ... a lot of people with sleep apnea have little or no REM sleep. A good CPAP/BiPAP with APAP and heated humidifier seems crucial. Playing around with the CPAP Pro mask right now. Apprecaite all the postings here!

Chuck

[Burkebang]

I have only been on CPAP for a couple of weeks. Before starting I really felt like I was "cirkling the drain", not a good place to be at age 41. I am nowhere near a 100% well, but I have definatly stabilized and started getting better. I still have a lot of payback to do, but I feel like I'm getting into a very positive circle now. So hang in there and you'll soon start feeling better

[Kohkie]

I started PAP therapy on November 21, 2011. I was diagnosed with severe OSA, AHI was around 64, and my longest time without breathing was 70+ seconds. That really scared me, so I was highly motivated to make the therapy work. My sleep study was on a Sunday night. I knew I would have trouble sleeping during the sleep test so I took the next day off from work. I didn't really fall asleep until 2:00 a.m. They woke me to put the CPAP on me at 4:00 a.m. and I wore it until 6:30 a.m. I had thought that after, that bad a night, I would go home and sleep for several hours. However, although I certainly didn't feel wonderful, I didn't feel sleepy either. I spent the whole day up and about, and didn't even fall asleep in front of the TV that night, which had become SOP in my life. I was so surprised by that, I couldn't wait to get my CPAP. Yes the first night was horrendous, and the first week wasn't easy. But no matter, how little sleep I got, I still felt better than I did before I started therapy. I have a 30-40 minute commute each way to work, that got easier immediately. On the other hand, the morning and sometimes all day headaches took almost a month to stop. I haven't fallen asleep while watching TV even once, since I started therapy. My memory is getting better. I am losing weight, 21 lbs so far. The dark circles under my eyes have started to fade. I can actually see my eyes again because my eyelids aren't all puffy and droopy.

I think instant success is partly attitude. After decades of being sleep deprived I counted every single baby step forward, as a huge success. Getting used to the mask, took a several weeks, actually sleeping through the night, 3 weeks before that happened, and still doesn't happen every night. I still occasionally get morning headaches, but they are less frequent. Stopped taking Elavil to help me sleep, but still have to take Benadryl to help me fall asleep in the first place. Insomnia is a constant battle. However, once I do fall asleep, I actually sleep!!! I dream again. I don't have trouble driving, my brain has stopped trying to tell me that "it's ok to close your eyes when the road is straight". I don't have trouble staying awake at stop lights. So I consider my therapy an instant success, but I know that there are still better days ahead of me, and that too is so exciting.

I could focus on the fact that I am still getting headaches, that at first I was lucky if I actually slept for 4 or 5 hours. That I sometimes wonder if I will ever feel comfortable sleeping with nasal pillows, but I don't. My greatest fear, is that the power will go out and I'll have to sleep without my CPAP. And for me that IS instant success.

[Gaga58]

Adrianne...I'm in about 4 months now...instant success no, but I haven't had a lot of the problems adjusting to the machine/mask that a lot of folks do. But I can say my headaches are gone and have been almost from day one of using the machine and for that I am very thankful...I got so tired of always waking up with a headache and then just dragging through the day. I used to have all kinds of energy, motivated to do and try anything, but over the course of ten years that went down the tubes! And I'm nowhere near where I hope to one day be, although since I'm not a spring chicken anymore I don't expect to go back and feel like I'm 30 either...I just want to enjoy my grandkids and keeping up with them!! And having the "want to" is slowly coming back as well...for me the hardest part was getting my pressures right to where I could get the optimium benefits and I could have never done that without Pugsy's help, so the members on this forum will help you in every way they can to get the most out of this...stick with it, hang in there, and know that is does get better over time!! Good luck to you!!