;)
I've now been using CPAP for 100 nights and am very happy with it.
There have been a couple of nights that for some reason I put it on when I went to sleep and took it off a couple of hours later in my sleep. I'm still puzzled as to why I did that, because other than a vague memory of thinking it was morning I don't remember much about those nights.
A few brief points:
I haven't taken any sleep supplements during this time
I've only had two lucid dreams (and a couple of pre-lucid moments but woke up)
I've not had any episodes of sleep paralysis
I've still had hypnagogia every night
I love to sleep in a cold room and usually have a fan pointing directly at me, so I am also considering buying one of those hose-socks that is designed to prevent "rain-out"(condensation) in the hose. Even though I don't use a humidifier I do find that if I sleep in the path of my bedroom fan that I get a lot of condensation early in the morning which is unpleasant. I suspect that insulating the hose from the cooling effect of the fan would prevent this.
My data for these 100 days is good. My residual AHI peaks at 1.1, but most of the time is below 0.5 - even on the nights where I've consumed alcohol.
I did have two nights where I deliberately didn't use CPAP as I'd agreed to test a sleep monitor for a hospital and gather some sleep data using it. I have to say that half way through the first night I considered stopping the monitoring and putting the CPAP back on because I woke myself snoring a few times in the night and had a few of those "throat closing" episodes, however, I carried on. By the second day (when I delivered the machine back to the hospital) I was tired and managed to fall asleep just before 5pm for a short 20 minute nap before waking and staying awake until 8pm where I slept through on the ward until 8am the following morning.
On the mornings after not using CPAP I had a sore throat and felt a bit congested. This is something that I'd become used to in my pre-CPAP life. On the second morning I woke with a headache - this too is something that had become a regular occurance and my morning routine used to involve stopping off at a shop on the way to work to buy lunch, and a couple of times a week I'd buy paracetamol.
The irritating thing is that my own ignorance (and that of the doctors that I spoke with) meant that my symptoms (headache, sleep paralysis, hypnagogia etc) weren't considered together and instead I was given a CT scan and painkillers for the headaches along with antidepressants for the sleep issues - although to be fair this was 15 - 20 years ago and sleep apnoea was even less known about than it is today.
Although awareness, diagnosis and treatment of Sleep Apnoea is good in those groups of patients considered to be at higher risk, I do still wonder how many community doctors would consider sleep apnoea as a diagnosis for some conditions in the general population.
I know that I only have mild - moderate sleep apnoea and I know what a huge difference CPAP has made to me, I can only imagine what the change will feel like for people with more severe apnoea.
I'll definitely be staying with CPAP. It's travelled well with me from home to hotels, to hospitals, to foreign countries and soon wilderness camping!