Sleep Deprived x 3: The APAP Asthma Axis of Destruction aka APAP Causes Asthma Attacks

 The last half of the title is SEO for the poor patient who is having the same experience I am. Hopefully they'll find this post because, as far as I can tell, it is the only internet source in the universe talking about asthma attacks caused by CPAP/APAP machines.

So. I lost all of yesterday to asthma. It was pretty bad. Zombie bad. I was non functional. I managed some laundry, a blog post, and that was it. I had nothing else in me. I wasn't competent to drive. I was beyond struggling. It was beyond miserable. 

It absolutely sucks to be randomly sidelined like that. I had plans. Things I needed to do. Didn't matter. This sleep apnea bullshit wiped me off the board. Boom. Done. No life for you.

I had to add in a steroid inhaler. Then more steroid inhaler and a lot of albuterol. By bed time I'd been sucking on three different inhalers and the neb all day with little improvement. It looked like I was on track for prednisone.

I googled, googled, googled. I had to fix it or I was screwed.

All I could find were articles saying that apparently CPAP/APAP is a miracle cure for asthma. Yet there I was having a beyond unsustainable asthma attack. Something didn't compute.

Out of desperation, I reviewed all the settings on the machine thinking there had to be something I could do to improve things. 

Well, I should have known. The guy who invalidated every little thing I said at the set up appointment was full of shit. Shocker.

The auto ramp feature was off. This feature keeps it low key until you're asleep, which not being used to the machine yet, is kind of important. I was being forced to go in at full tornado assault.

They'd selected the wrong mask in the settings. I have no idea how that impacts the machine, but I assume it has some relevance.

And they hadn't enabled (or told me about) the Expiratory thingie. This is a setting that has the machine dial back the pressure when you exhale. So you don't feel like you're dueling with a hydra to get the air out of your lungs.

So basically, I'd been set up to try and breathe in gale force winds. As it turns out, that's really difficult. You'd think air slamming down your throat would increase your oxygenation, but I find that I can't breathe at all. There's no space for YOU to breathe because the machine fights you for it. The machine wants to do everything.

Pauses to wonder about how CPAPs/APAPs would fit into Stephen King's story with the machines attacking people--sorry, brain isn't working well enough to remember the title and google can't figure it out either. But I'm pretty sure he wrote it before CPAPs/APAPs existed. Otherwise, he left some real nightmare fuel on the table.

 (And in reality, some CPAP/APAP models have been poisoning  patients with flecks of poly something but not my machine the manufacturer promises while also admitting they too use a poly something that comes into contact with the air flow. But it's fine. Absolutely fine. A big corporation with a profit incentive wouldn't lie, right? At least I can always get a check for three cents from the class action lawsuit if anything bad happens...)

Anyway, I further realized that my machine wasn't new. This was not disclosed to me. I was given the impression that everything was ready to go and that I had a new unit. I do not. It's missing all the original packaging. All of it. I didn't know that until I watched some YouTube videos and saw what it was supposed to look like.

I don't know how clean the unit was. It's quite possible I was given a machine used by someone else previously and who knows how well it was cleaned. Ergo, I washed everything thoroughly.

So I sucked down a million meds. Washed washed washed the machine. Slapped on the mask and hoped for the best, but fully expected I wouldn't be able to wear it long.

To my surprise, all the tinkering I did made it more comfortable. I also found out how to take a deep breath without triggering the system to attack me like a feral chihuahua made of wind. See, the machine is supposed to know you're awake and leave you the fuck alone EXCEPT deep breaths are triggering no matter what.

Well, I take deep breaths. While I'm awake. Because I'm a living human who breathes. 

But apparently this registers in the sensors as a sleep apnea episode that needs to die. So I get a face full of hurricane and then I can't get the deep breath I need and then I feel like I can't breathe at all. It's a bit like an externally applied asthma attack.

Not a bit. Exactly. It's exactly like an asthma attack. 

I can't swallow the air that's coming at me at the speed of light fast enough and so I choke. Hard. Then I end up air trapping on top of having an ache from not being able to get the deep breath my body is asking for. Picture doing that all night as a fire hose of air dries out all your tissue, triggering inflammation. That's how the asthma started. It's a bunch of second, third, fourth order cascading effects from the machine.

I have NO idea why no one but me sees how this works. Because it's really fucking obvious.

(Possibly I don't breathe normally? But I think we would've noticed that before now?)

Eventually, I figured out how to take deep breathes in a way the sensors couldn't detect. It involves some contortions of my lips that are hard to describe, but it works well.

Last night, overall, went better. I didn't sleep for shit, but my breathing was okay and I mostly kept my mouth shut (to protect my teeth...CPAPs/APAPs are hell on teeth it turns out because you're basically blow drying them all night long which is very pro-cavity--two days at the CPAP tooth salon and my teeth hurt already). Unfortunately, by the time something is causing a lot of asthma, I'm a little too skittish to trust it enough to sleep. 

So little sleep. But better breathing. The asthma is gone. Thank God.

The only thing left to fix is the starting pressure. This is an APAP so it's supposed to ramp up as needed, but I think they have the starting pressure set too high. I need something lower and less aggressive and with the way APAP works it should be doable. 

I am so dead tired today, I'm not sure I'll figure it out. I may need to call them to change it...I'm not sure. It all seems a bit bridge too far today. I can muddle through with what I have, hopefully get a good night's sleep tonight under my belt first before I attempt to be my own sleep specialist yet again.

 Please. I'm so tired.

Shout out to the asthma also rans:  Whoever had a bonfire last night that had smoke wafting in through our  windows and the skunk who sprayed right outside the house. Nothing like spending all day fighting to breathe only to have even more bullshit hit your lungs. Nice try, but I have n95s so put that in your stinkhole and smoke it.