Posted by NoDozer on August 15, 2008 at 12:16:19:In Reply to: Obvious Obstuctions/surgery posted by GahImTired on August 13, 2008 at 07:29:10:
Wow, it sounds like you have been dealing with a lot. Hearing your story and the stories of many others makes me realize that I really didn't (don't) have it so bad. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in February of 2007 and since then I have had a UPPP and MMA. I am not a very patient person, so I didn't give CPAP a very good try before being talked into the UPPP. CPAP just didn't work. Well the UPPP made things worse, so it was back on CPAP. What I learned from my first two rounds with CPAP was that the sleep doctors were setting my pressures too low. I'm believe that the studies accurately showed that I was just fine with 7 cm, but I had the some problem as you... I still woke up with apneas. That's when I decided to 'self titrate'. This is not a practice recommended by anyone other than an apneac. I ended up adjusting my pressure to 12cm to get a moderately good night of sleep. I still had to be drugged to do it, but I was getting by. It may be possible that your pressure is too low. I had an issue like a lot of people have with their auto mechanic. The car has a problem until the expert takes a look at it and says, "it worked just fine for me". The thing that really got the doctors on board with my way of thinking was using an AutoCPAP. That thing would crank all the way up to 15 cm on me during the night and that finally convinced them that I need more than what the sleep study showed. Now, I'm not telling you to tinker with your machine like I did, but you may need to take more control over your treatment. I will never make the mistake of blindly trusting the "experts" again. Some of them are good and trustworthy, and some aren't.