It's been awhile since I've posted about my journey in the world of CPAP. The goal given to me by the sleep medicine doctor was an Apnea-Hypopnea Index (or AHI) of 4 or less. I've often wondered about why 4? He went over the results of my overnight sleep study and my AHI for the sleep study was 53. A little investigation online and I found out -- from 5 to 15 denotes mild sleep apnea. Fifteen to 30 is moderate, while a greater than 30 AHI is considered severe. AHI = sum of the number of apneas (pauses in breathing) plus the number of hypopneas (periods of shallow breathing) occurring, on average, each hour. Now it makes a little more sense to me but I'm not sure why I didn't ask those questions when he was going over the results of my sleep study with me.

While I've been doing OK, I'm still not quite where I need to be. I've found friends that I have that I didn't know used a CPAP telling me it took over a year to see good results - results being more energy, feeling better during the day, etc.. I've been using a CPAP over a year now but still having my ups and downs trying to figure out how to improve my AHI numbers. As you can see, I've had some really good nights with an AHI under 3 and I've had some really bad nights. I've finally decided to stop changing masks. I'm a mouth breather mostly because I have a deviated septum and can't always breath through my nose. It definitely feels better when I can though and I think that's the reason I have some really good nights and some not so good nights.

Is there anyone else that has a deviated septum and using a CPAP? I haven't looked into having it corrected as I'm 76 and not sure about having my nose busted (I think) and corrected (or whatever the term is!).

Happy Zzzz's as my cyber friend @thankful says (nice saying by the way!)