Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
corwin1968
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Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by corwin1968 » Mon Jun 18, 2018 8:51 pm

Periodically, I wake up at night feeling like I am suffocating and when I put my hand in front of the air venting holes, there is no air blowing. Seconds after that, the machine starts blowing air again. During these events, I am not fully awake so my perception is that the machine is simply not blowing air, which wakes me up and then it starts blowing again, allowing me to go back to sleep. I've looked at Sleepyhead and last night, when this happened at least twice, my AHI score was 0.0. This doesn't happen regularly and has occurred maybe a dozen times over the last 6 months or so. Other than these events, there are no indicators that my machine is not working properly.

Anyone ever experience this?

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zoocrewphoto
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by zoocrewphoto » Mon Jun 18, 2018 11:26 pm

Can you post the graphs from a night when this happens?

Do you have the auto on/off set? For some people, it can accidentally detect no breathing and shut itself off?

Any chance you have electrical problems that would cause the machine to turn off?

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corwin1968
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by corwin1968 » Tue Jun 19, 2018 6:19 am

I don't think it's an electrical issues because I have a fan running from the same outlet but I will check all connections to be sure.

I'm not too familiar with reading Sleepyhead data but here is part of the graph. The two blank sections represent eight and seven minute time-frames, respectively. I assume these are where the events occurred.

My AHI for that night was 0.0
june 17 2018.jpg
june 17 2018.jpg (355.74 KiB) Viewed 30172 times

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ChicagoGranny
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by ChicagoGranny » Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:56 am

Is the machine still under the ResMed two-year warranty?

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Jas_williams
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by Jas_williams » Tue Jun 19, 2018 1:32 pm

I would try turning off auto start as you have some large leaks going on and they may be causing the Autoset to think you have removed the mask and it's shutting down

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D.H.
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by D.H. » Tue Jun 19, 2018 2:28 pm

I go with turning off auto-off (or auto on/off if those features are combined).

Based on a snippet from your screenshot, I know only that you're using a ResMed machine.

Please fill out your profile so we can know exactly what equipment you're using.

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ChicagoGranny
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by ChicagoGranny » Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:20 pm

Jas_williams wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 1:32 pm
I would try turning off auto start as you have some large leaks going on and they may be causing the Autoset to think you have removed the mask and it's shutting down
Those look like mere artifacts. In any case, they do not fall where the machine was off.

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palerider
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by palerider » Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:39 pm

Jas_williams wrote:
Tue Jun 19, 2018 1:32 pm
I would try turning off auto start as you have some large leaks going on and they may be causing the Autoset to think you have removed the mask and it's shutting down
When you take the mask off, a resmed machine normally doesn't show a large leak, it recognizes the mask off, not enough back pressure.

If it's logging a large leak, then it sees enough back pressure to think the mask is still on, and won't shut off.

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SnoringInOregon
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by SnoringInOregon » Thu Jun 21, 2018 11:36 pm

I don't know about the ResMed machines, but the Dreamstation has separate settings for auto-on and auto-off. Not clear from above discussion which ResMed machines have separate settings?

Default on the Dreamstation is auto-on enabled, auto-off disabled.

I urge people to keep auto-on enabled? Why? It wasn't obvious to me until we had a short duration power outage. I kept "breathing" thru the outage, but of course that was just into the mask, there was no air from the machine. But when power was restored the machine started back up.

I didn't even wake up.

Without that feature enabled, any power glitch will shut your machine down until you manually restart it. Not good.

yourbrokenoven
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by yourbrokenoven » Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:24 am

I kind of wish there was a built in battery that would be enough to power an alarm for when power outages were detected. Just something optional.

That being said, I must either have high pressures or a high sensitivity to them because there's no way to sleep through that change of pressure for me.

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ChicagoGranny
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by ChicagoGranny » Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:28 am

yourbrokenoven wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:24 am
I kind of wish there was a built in battery that would be enough to power an alarm for when power outages were detected. Just something optional.
This, https://www.truevalue.com/power-failure-alarm , is much cheaper than having CPAP machine manufacturers offer an option. I use one all the time; even carry it in my bag on trips.

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chunkyfrog
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by chunkyfrog » Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:40 am

Thank you for posting that, Granny.
Hardware stores can be a gold mine for all sorts of things.

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D.H.
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by D.H. » Fri Jun 22, 2018 1:57 pm

yourbrokenoven wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:24 am
I kind of wish there was a built in battery that would be enough to power an alarm for when power outages were detected. Just something optional.

That being said, I must either have high pressures or a high sensitivity to them because there's no way to sleep through that change of pressure for me.
Note that my old CPAP - An AEIOMed Everest 3 - has a fully integrated battery that would power the machine for several hours.

Alas, that company went out of business when their factory in China burned down. This means that you might not be able to get parts and filters, even if the machine is still in working order.


The machine was not data capable.

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Marillion
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Re: Wake up feeling like I'm suffocating and no air is blowing.

Post by Marillion » Mon Jun 25, 2018 9:55 am

ChicagoGranny wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 10:28 am
yourbrokenoven wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:24 am
I kind of wish there was a built in battery that would be enough to power an alarm for when power outages were detected. Just something optional.
This, https://www.truevalue.com/power-failure-alarm , is much cheaper than having CPAP machine manufacturers offer an option. I use one all the time; even carry it in my bag on trips.

Image
Good tip. Purchased one on Amazon and even with shipping to Canada it was a reasonable price. Thank you!