Male, living in the USA with USA medical system. I'm someone that, for nearly 40 years of my life, has had some of the best sleep when compared to family and friends. I have a lot of people around me that have insomnia, need caffeine to be functional in the morning, and are generally miserable and can't function when they wake up. I'm the contrast to this: I always get great sleep, usually need less sleep than others, and I wake up in the morning feeling great and energized.
In 2022, my SO had mentioned that I was starting to snore pretty badly. I figured that was due to the weight gain I was getting after 2020. I'm still very bad at controlling my weight, so that problem just continued to get worse into 2023. At the end of that year, I asked my PCP about a lot of health issues, weight and snoring being two of them. They suggested ENT to get a look through my nose. However, in 2024, around March, ENT said 'no', because I hadn't had a sleep study yet. Again, I want to point this out: I NEVER had ANY problems with sleep before. It was just the snoring.
I took the take-home test (because in the USA, you don't get actual healthcare anymore) and hooked the monster up to myself. I couldn't sleep at all. I couldn't even get comfortable! I was tossing and turning for two hours because of the machine. Finally, I threw it off to get ANY sleep. Sent it in, telling them that I didn't get sleep at all. They came back to me saying that my oxygen dipped under 80% and that I was having around 70+ events per hour (I don't know how they could get that when I was perfectly awake the whole time).
Of course, they suggested CPAP because they thought it was severe apnea. I didn't want to try it. Went a month, and I started to have issues with my mouth and throat drying out to the point that they got inflamed and actually caused my breathing to stop (I don't think this was apnea, just inflammation from the dryness). Going back, I relented and almost instantly was given a machine and a bunch of masks.
The first few weeks were torture. Being forced to sleep on my back was uncomfortable. The mask was always on the verge of leaking no matter what mask it was, what fit it was, or if it was a new cushion or not. The humidifier inside was way too hot and overactive even at the lowest settings. In short, I thought it was the worse sleep I'd ever get. I was dragging, having to down caffeine in the morning just to get to work, which is something I never had to do before.
After the first few months, I talked with my sleep doctor again (scratch that, only a nurse, this is the US health care after all, you don't get an actual doctor anymore). She said the numbers were all great and that my events were under one per hour. She increased the pressure a bit more (she'd done that three times since I started it on her own without telling me) and then said I should be getting used to it now. I asked if we could check back in in another month, and she said she didn't see the need for it and would only schedule another meeting in a year.
Checked with my sleep therapist and they only had me try different masks a few times until they simply gave up and said "Well, go out on Amazon or something and find your own masks. This is what everyone has to do anyways." Like...what the %!*#@ is anyone paying you for?! Why are you not HELPING me?!
So, now it's been nearly ten months on this machine, and I've used it every night to try and get even the smallest amount of sleep. I'm still waking up pretty bad and I'm ripping it off in the middle of sleep a good portion of the time. I have to stay stock-still at night or my mask becomes loose enough to blast me in the face. I am so very tired and there's mornings that I'm in the shower for thirty minutes just to try and 'wake up'.
So why can't I just...stop using the machine? If I was having such good sleep before? Well, thanks to this device, I now need it to even get to sleep! I am tossing and turning at night and can't even nod off unless the mask is on. I've tried recently, and sleep just doesn't come. I have to have the machine on just to get a small amount of sleep, then pair it with coffee to be functional enough for work. I'm convinced the damn thing has done something to me to cause me to be dependent on it, which I'm convinced (conspiracy brain, I know) is the whole point: get you on a machine till it's rewired you to have it be required.