I bet a furry cpap would actually work really well

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I can't sleep. 😕 I skipped a benadryl dose today, which you'd think would be a tiny thing since I'm on twice a day zyrtec, but my sinus went into overtime just before bed and now I have one of those throbbing headaches that sharply accentuates my awareness of every breath through my CPAP mask. So now I'm waiting for the benadryl to work, hopefully I'll be able to use that tonight. I'm in the middle of doubling a med dose that can make apnea worse, so if I sleep without the machine I'm risking not only poor sleep, but everything associated with my OSAT dropping into the 70s will ramp up my risk for heart strain and the resulting morning headache, not to mention the nightmares that sets off.

How many people die each year from sleep apnea? Is there any way to determine sleep apnea or sleep apnea related deaths in a year?

Yes, you can die from sleep apnea. Carrie Fisher did.

19 Celebrities with Sleep Apnea

There are different kinds of and causes for apneas, and evidence for mine goes back to a car accident I had at 19. I very likely had concussion and possible brain steam injury, with most of the scarring and pain located at the base of my skull and the top of my spine. My sleep history is alarming. I stopped sleeping more than 2-4 hours a day for about 2 decades because I was so terrified of waking up from the worst nightmares ever to wildly racing tachycardia that finally had to be surgically corrected. I described sensations that had a doctor sending me to seizure testing, which turned out normal. I grew so fearful of medications not letting me wake up that I stopped taking them completely, choosing to live with excruciating pain for several years. I finally reached a point where the apnea became so bad just during a short nap that I was unable to stand and had to crawl for several minutes before I could regain control of my body and orient enough to function. How I never had strokes in my sleep is anyone's guess, because my blood pressure goes insanely high while that is going on, despite regular blood pressure medications and otherwise healthy lifestyle.

In short, I am very high risk for not waking up one day. My CPAP machine cannot force me to breathe with this kind of apnea, it can only encourage it and keep my oxygen levels high enough to keep my brain from failing so quickly, and hopefully make it easier to keep healing. Doctors have told me this kind of apnea can increase brain dysfunction and damage, and even though by regular standards I stop breathing far less than other apnea patients, I simply don't restart breathing as quickly as they do. I literally have reached the point a few times where I was very close to not waking up at all, and my body was fighting as hard as it could trying to get me to wake up and just BREATHE.

I'm really liking 'getting my brain back' this last year, and I'm especially liking sleep nowadays. I still don't usually sleep more than 5-6 hours a night, but it's a much healthier sleep than I've had in decades. I can tell I'm handling more activity and stress than I used to be able to handle, and I last a little longer before I hit my fatigue wall.

It would be easy to just toss the mask aside on nights like this, but I'd rather feel my sinus calm down and airway open back up again, and then start over with the mask. I feel safe with a mask on my face. I don't panic in my sleep very often any more. My general anxiety level has come down a bit, and the nightmares are nearly gone now. And looky that, writing this out gave the benadryl time to kick in. Laterz.

sleep study fallout and consequences

My apnea-hypopnea index was 17 (I was told that meant I woke up an average of 17 times an hour), and my desat was 78%, which is importantly not good and scary bad. Blood oxygen saturation ideally shouldn't fall below 80%, and if it does, it's considered critical. (Simplistically, I'm on my way to congestive heart failure if I don't correct this, if something else doesn't get me first.) During sleep study, according to the document I link in the next paragraph, 75-80% is considered moderate, and less than 75% is considered severe, so I'm kinda cutting that one close. (Ever wonder how people just die in their sleep? Now you know.)

How to Interpret Your Sleep Study That's a pdf document, so give it time to load, actually very cool with pictures and graphs of how it all goes down on the testing end.

I have 4 out of 6 qualifying CPAP symptoms- daytime sleepiness, hypertension, insomnia, and mood disorder. I've lived with all this for 2 decades. I've never yet had a stroke and never dx'd with heart disease, although both are prevalent in my mom's side of the family, and once that stuff hit my mom, she went down fairly quickly. I have been doing everything right- nutrition, exercising, med monitoring, excellent bloodwork and health according to everything I'm tested for. That means nothing if I'm not getting enough oxygen.

Last night I found myself ripping my mask off at first, but that stopped and I slept great after I lowered the humidity. This morning I'm sneezing and runny nose stuff like allergies, but apparently this is common and someone in comments said lowering the humidity even more helped, so I'm going to try that. I'm already on round the clock zyrtec with benadryl on standby, but we haven't started cedar pollen here in Mirkwood yet, so I need to figure this out before successive allergy seasons blow back up on me. Unless I actually have a real allergic reaction (and you know I'll be watching this), I think the O sat level coming back up is important enough to keep trying. At any rate, saline mist helped to dissipate that discomfort this morning.

Top 10 Ways To Solve Common CPAP Problems and Discomfort

Side note- I'm finding out that sleep apnea can happen in all ages and body types, and you don't have to be old and fat to 'get' it. I had a sleep study done 10 years ago that I wish they'd followed up on more rigorously, because even though they didn't see apnea, they did see brain rhythm lending to insomnia, which I was probably born with. I'm sure nearly ripping my head off ejecting from a vehicle crash didn't help anything, but for years I've lived with so much neck pain and weird sensations, including pain with swallowing, I can only wonder if part of my need for CPAP now is from an ongoing degeneration around the nerve injuries I acquired in that wreck. It's interesting that I barely weigh 5 pounds more than I did at the time of the first sleep study ten years ago, pretty sure 5 pounds wouldn't cause apnea on its own, especially since I'm currently 40 pounds down from highest weight. If you are holding back from looking at the possibility of a sleep apnea diagnosis because of stigma, you might literally be holding your life in your hands, so check into it if you're having symptoms.