On Sep 1, 2004, at 7:52 AM, Nick Arnett wrote:
CPAP compliance rates are around 40 percent -- most people can't tolerate it for one reason or another. There are some in-between surgeries, but their success rate is not great, except for one method that wears off after two years or so (that one stiffens the tongue via radio waves).
Having slept -- or tried to sleep -- next to a CPAP-using spouse for several
weeks before she joined the ranks of the 60% of non-compliant patients, I can
very well understand why compliance rates are so low. Think of trying to
sleep with a plastic mask over your nose (and maybe mouth), elastic webbing
around your head to keep it on, and a one-inch hose running to a bread
box-sized machine on your dresser, and you'll have an idea of what it's like
just to lay down to sleep. Now imagine trying to fall asleep during
quarter-hour or so while the pressure ramps up (if you are fortunate enough
to have insurance that covers one of the more recent devices that ramps up
to operating pressure).
At night, the ice weasels come. Or anyway, the face-farts. At least on my
Japanese-descended wife's face, the masks (we went through three before she
finally gave up) began to leak just about the time she began to actually
fall asleep and the muscle tone in her face relaxed. The result is a
continuous fart sound, which is annoying and funny enough, but then she
starts laughing, and the fart sound changes from continuous (which is bad)
to pulsing (which is worse, being much funnier).
Eventually, if she was lucky enough to make it past the face-farts and fall asleep, then, her jaw went slack and the air rushing in her nose started leaking out through her relaxed lips, which was pretty unattractive and distracting for me, if not her.
Nick's milage may vary, of course, as he is not (to the best of my knowledge), an Asian female.
Sincerely,
Dave
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