So the dr feels we need to practice getting him to get himself back to sleep, add white noise, etc etc etc. Ok no problem. I'm ok with that. He only had on avg 1.5 apneas an hour..BUT..


I am looking at his graph. Out of 89 arousals, 81 of those were from 130am to 645am. Hello..no wonder I'm tired. Why cant they be at 10pm?? ANYWAY.. Out of 13 apnea episodes, SEVEN of them were from 430am to 6am!! So yeah, only an avg of 1.5hr... but I cant very well say this is behavioral when I am LOOKING at the graph and it is telling me he is waking from an apnea episode..granted the avg length is 10seconds, so not that long.


I dont know what I am looking for here.. am Ir eading too much into this, would you call the dr and talk about it with him? Would you wait and see how the sleep training goes? I am just kind of frustrated.


Tonight I ordered the sleep machine. (sounds). We made Monester spray and talked about sleeping in his own bed and the prizes, etc. Seriously though, this is all stuff we have done before, we'll just be real strict about it for 3 wks. sigh

sledbet wrote:

He only had on avg 1.5 apneas an hour..BUT..
I am looking at his graph. Out of 89 arousals, 81 of those were from 130am to 645am. Hello..no wonder I'm tired. Why cant they be at 10pm?? ANYWAY.. Out of 13 apnea episodes, SEVEN of them were from 430am to 6am!! So yeah, only an avg of 1.5hr... but I cant very well say this is behavioral when I am LOOKING at the graph and it is telling me he is waking from an apnea episode..granted the avg length is 10seconds, so not that long.

I have been noticing that with the entire number of apneas divided by the total sleep time it dilutes the results. I know that people often get centrals when they are starting into the sleep cycle and this can, if isolated, make it look like there is something wrong when it's normal. So solution would be to average those in over the course of the night and all is well. But we know about those and can effectively eliminate them from consideration and look at what's left. To assume we aren't that bright and need to continue to do this averaging doesn't really make much sense.

Something is obviously happening between the hours of 4:30 and 6 in the morning; but what? I think all of us would love to know that answer and see if there is something to be done. I think this is where the newness of dealing with sleep apnea is working against more detailed approaches and may delay advances in understanding what is really happening to cause apneas at certain time and not others. Part of the problem I believe is that the medical community can treat this now and nothing more needs to be done to narrow it down -- not that many of the doctors whom are being called upon to treat this condition are actually specialists in sleep medicine who could bring their focus to really advance the science. There are dedicated individuals and companies out there and what I said doesn't apply to them in the least.

With the sleep graphs available there ought to be someone that can shed some light on what is happening to your son during that time. Is it REM sleep which would have more episodes in general? But then why just that REM cycle? That's the kind of interest I wish the doctors would turn their interest to.

In the end I agree with you that it doesn't seem that this is purely behavioural, but it may be a bit of an uphill battle to argue to the contrary of the doctor's findings/presumptions with him already being unconcerned and not looking (as you have) to the timing of the respiratory events. Time will reveal a lot more. There is still the healing time for the surgery, and as OSA sufferers know it may be that in time the OSA will be cured as stated, or symptoms will return. I offer you my prayers for your son and his recovery and for his future. Thanks for listening to my half rant. Hope it wasn't too boring.

John


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Thanks John!

He is 5, but his surgery was 3.5 yrs ago when he was 2.

I hear what you are saying though!

Suzanne

Hi Sledbet,

Chris has been on cpap since feb.  I have been getting the data from her card every once in a while to see how things are going.  When I look at her data, the most likely time for her to have a breathing event is from 2-6am....however she can and does have them at anytime during the night.  I was reading somewhere that it is more common to have breathing events in the early morning hours -- I believe it had something to do with the body's rythm.  During one of her sleep studies she had back to back apneas for hours (instead of a line everyonce in a while the graph was solid black for those hours)  She also had a lot of arousals, and leg movements.  Unfortunately they did not match with the apneas so she was diagnosed with periodic leg movement disorder.

I will admitt that it is hard to train a child to go back to sleep when they have been in the habit of waking up.  My first child woke up every night crying for 6 months, then we realized it was from ear infections and milk allergies -- after the allergies were cleared up it took her 6 long months to learn to go back to sleep by herself (she was 18m when she finally learned).  

Learned behaviors are hard to break, but ask all the questions to make sure what you are doing is correct.  It is much easier to do hard things when there is not the little voice in the back of you head saying -- this isn't the right thing to do--  If you are not sure what the Dr is telling you is correct, have him convince you that what he is saying is true.  There could be more things going on than you think.  If your Dr won't work with you get another opinoin.  You do know you child best.

Susanne mom to the mini-hosehead Chris

Thanks Susanne!

We have agreed to give this new trial 3wks to see how it goes. He did fabulous last night. Calledme in, came to my bed, etc. But he was a BEAR today. Then tonight he had musle type behavior thatinficates we are in for a long night. so it wil be intersting to see how tonight goes. I hae heard him have 3 apneas so far...

I was thinking that I dont see how sleep training will nullify the Apneas..kwim??? Let's say we get him in his own bed, he wakes, goes back to sleep doest get me...great..but if he is still having these apnease..I am not sure I am ok with that!  And if Cpap isnt the answer, I understand, but what CAN be? OT to stregngthen those muscles that are collapsing????

So we wait 3 weeks. If this works, we are done for now.  If it doesnt, we go in  with a list :)