Franko39 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2024 12:09 pm
- I can sleep through the night with the mask on now (most nights anyway).
Your previous post indicated that there were some life issues (young kids + shift work) that interfere with getting a full,
uninterrupted night's sleep.
- Leaks are no longer a regular issue, since switching to the F30i mask (still happens occasionally, due to my tossing and turning).
If the data you post is typical, your leaks are well controlled and you don't need to worry about them unless they are waking you up. If you do wake up from a leak but have learned how to fix the leak and get back to sleep in about 10 minutes, then you don't even nee to worry too much about the leaks that wake you up if they're not happening all night long almost every single night.
- The last thing I was trying to resolve was the flow limitations. I've heard mixed things, including that my figures weren't too bad. I tried upping the pressure and upping EPR a bit. Not sure if it made a big difference, but I decided to just leave things be, as it sounds like my flow limits aren't terrible.
Sometimes chilling about about trying to fix the last little thing we're seeing in the data is the better choice. In other words, deciding to just leave things be for now is reasonable.
Overall, I think I may feel a difference now, on nights where I'm able to use the CPAP for a full night without interruption. Hard to say for sure - I've heard that it takes some time to see improvements, so I'll keep at it.
Keep in mind that as long as your kids are young and they're interrupting your sleep by crawling into your bed, you're going to have some fatigue issues: It's part of parenting young children. As the kids grow and become less needy at night, you will have more nights where you will be able to use the CPAP all night long without interruption.
The only issue I now have is that my mouth tends to open a bit at night as I'm asleep, and the blast of air coming in from the CPAP makes my lips really, really dry. I've been waking up once or twice each night due to how dry my lips are - not sure if there's a good fix for this or not.
There are a few things worth considering.
First if this is happening often enough for your lips to actually get chapped, you will need to do something to protect the lips.
If this happens almost every night, you could consider taping in an effort to prevent the mouth from opening. If you don't want to tape, then I would suggest the following:
1) Slather on a lip balm before you go to bed each night. And keep some lip balm on the night stand next to the CPAP. When you wake up and the lips feel dry, slather on some additional lip balm before going back to sleep.
2) Keep yourself well hydrated both during the day and at night. You may want to keep some water on the night stand as well. Sometimes drinking a bit of water helps the lips feel less dry. Do this before you slather on the next coat of lip balm.
Finally I'll add this: Some lip balms seem to last a lot longer than others do. Back when I was starting out, I had a really bad problem with the exhaust flow from my Swift FX mask chapping my lips. I found Badger Balm (not cheap) to be one of the most long-lasting lip balms that I tried. Now? I can pretty much use whatever kind of balm I want. But I still need to slather on a pretty decent coat before I go to sleep and if I wake up and the lips feel even slightly dry, I'll put more balm on before going back to sleep.