Breathing at night

Jan 05, 2011 08:18

I haven't been sleeping well the last few weeks. The last few days this was exacerbated by the cold clogging up my nose, which interacts poorly with the CPAP. But in general the last few weeks have been sup-par.

Last night after I'd been asleep for a very short time, I woke up dreaming I was breathing smoke. I shut off the CPAP, then turned it back on...it seemed to be a little odd. Still too asleep to figure out if it was actually blowing actual smoke at me.

A few months ago, I bought a CPAP at a thrift store for $10. A pretty nice one. My thought was I might use it as a backup, or carry it in my car for unexpected exigencies. Since then it's been sitting here waiting for me to be brave enough to test it. Now was that time.

I set it up, hacked into the settings to adjust it to my pressure, filled it with water and started it up. It was immediately obvious why I've been sleeping poorly: My CPAP is not putting out nearly the same pressure that this one does at the same settings. It smelled a little unfamiliar, but really just like the dust in a stranger's house.

I slept with it last night. I have no idea if it worked better; after all the fooling about with the machines and so on, I didn't get back to sleep until almost 2am. But it's a lot quieter, and seems to be putting out a lot more air.

We'll see tonight.

(originally posted on dreamwidth. I'd like to keep all my comments in one place, so please comment there by creating an openID cross-site login.)

health, cpap, geekery

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