My Name is Dan, and I’m a CPAP User

If it hasn’t happened to you yet, there is a decent chance it soon will. The day when your spouse or partner says to you in the morning, “you hold your breath when you sleep”. Should that occur, there is a pretty good chance that you suffer from sleep apnea (SA). You would be in great company with these familiar folks; James Gandolfini, Regis Philbin, John Candy, Jerry Garcia, William Howard Taft, Reggie White, and Antonin Scalia to name a few. The difference is that you’ve not died from Sleep Apnea like they all did, yet.

October 8th marks my fifth year on a CPAP contraption. Use of the machine has not been without its challenges. In order for Medicare to continue paying for the therapy, I must use the machine for at least four hours each night, 70% of the time. In the beginning It took all my will and ironically many sleepless hours, when I would lay awake until hitting the four hour mark, then taking off the mask so I could get some sleep.

The silicone irritated my skin and the mask put pressure on my sinus. I broke one mask after tearing it off my head. As a last resort I switched to a mask with a memory foam seal. I could tolerate that pretty well, and eventually got my average usage to nearly eight hours per night. Still, I had issues with seal leakage, which would interrupt my sleep, and irritation, though improved, was still an issue.

Once again I began missing nights as a result, and finally decided to talk to a sleep doctor about a surgical solution. The problem was that I was still technically in compliance with minimum usage requirements, and the doctor couldn’t do the procedure.

I had been using a full face mask, one that covers my mouth and goes up to the bridge of my nose. The doctor suggested a different type of mask. Still considered full face, it covers my mouth, but only butts up to my nostrils. Well, that irritates my skin as well, but I found that alternating between the two types of masks gets me over the finish line.

As of today I’m at about 300 consecutive nights of six or more hours. I think that I should get a commemorative coin when I hit the one year mark.

My message is that you should stay positive if you start CPAP therapy. It is not easy, many of those who begin, don’t succeed. Some people actually love their CPAP, I am not one of them, still, I know I rest better, and I don’t want to end up like Tony Soprano, may he rest in peace.

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