Admin post: Welcome!

[blueraccoon]

Hi all! Welcome to who_needs_sleep, a community to commiserate, discuss, bond over sleep troubles, and possibly keep each other company in those wee hours (it's always wee hours somewhere).

General community rules are in the community profile; the really short version is below:

Be polite, be respectful of others. Be careful about offering advice: if it's not asked for, or if it's specifically requested that advice not be given, don't try to help. Sometimes all we need is someone who'll listen, not someone who will try and fix things.

If you have a question or a concern, you can get hold of me by email, or leave a comment on an admin post, or message me. Carrier pigeons might be going a bit far, though :)

A couple logistical things:

1. The community has no icon or pretty layout because I'm no good at that sort of thing, so if you want to design an icon and/or a layout for this community, by all means, have at it!

2. Tags right now are set so only an administrator can create them, so right now that means me. If you have suggestions for how we should tag entries, let me know. Odds are good I will be throwing myself on the mercy of subscribers to keep up with the tagging.

Again, welcome! And have a good night.

CPAP help

[sorchar]

Hi, all. I've had a CPAP for about 5 years now, but I stopped using it for a long time. I'm trying to get back into the habit of using it every night, but it's very rare I can keep it on all night - most of the time I end up either taking it off in my sleep, or not putting it back on after I've gotten up to go to the bathroom.

The mask isn't the problem - I like it just fine, as far as having something plastic strapped to your face all night goes.

Has anyone else managed to overcome this problem? I'd really like to solve it - I feel much better when I've managed to keep it on all night, and a coworker of mine recently had a friend die in his sleep at age 30 from a heart attack brought on by his apnea, so needless to say I'm motivated.

BiPAP help!

[blueraccoon]

The very abbreviated sleep history of becc, age 31:

April '08 - diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. given CPAP and told if I lost weight, the apnea would probably go away.

July '08 - had bariatric surgery.

somewhere in fall of '08 - stopped using CPAP as apnea had in fact gone away.

July '11 - went to doctor because sleep was becoming even more problematic than usual (I'm a crappy sleeper, always have been; I have anxiety so falling asleep is an issue and waking up several times a night also happens) and got referred to sleep doctor.

--Sleep doc did one study, and confirmed I have complex sleep apnea--so now in addition to my throat getting closed off, my brain keeps forgetting to tell my body to breathe*.

August '11--given BiPAP machine.

The BiPAP? Sucks donkey balls. Sorry for the language. It has a 20-min warmup to the stated pressure, which is great, and at about 25 minutes I can't breathe with it and I'm ripping the headgear off my head. It's trying to force me to breathe in rhythm with it, only if I breathed with the biPAP I'd be hyperventilating. I can't stand the changing pressure and it makes me feel claustrophobic and...gah.

Does anyone out here use a BiPAP and have suggestions for breathing with it? Because I'm about to go Office Space on this thing.