After four months of waiting, I finally have a new CPAP machine.
Sometime last year, my previous machine (a ResMed S9) began displaying an error stating the machine was past its life expectancy and that it was time for a new one. I called my old sleep doctor and discovered he had died, so I had to reenter the system anew by calling my primary care provider and requesting a new machine. I made that call the first week of January. By the time my doctor referred me to a new sleep doctor, that doctor scheduled me for a sleep study, I performed the sleep study, the results were emailed back to my sleep doctor, and my new machine was ready for pickup, four months had passed. All I can say is, I’m glad my old machine didn’t kick the bucket during that time, else I might have, too.
If you’ve ever been stuck on the phone with someone from tech support who refused to listen to what you were saying and insisted on walking you through a pre-determined troubleshooting script step-by-step, that’s what getting a new CPAP machine has been like. Every step of the way I have been reminded that if I don’t use my CPAP “enough” to show “compliancy,” there’s a chance insurance might not pay for my machine. They keep warning me about this, even after I explain to them that I am a CPAP advocate, and that I’ve been using a CPAP every day for the past 20 years. When I went to pick up my machine, the technician insisted on showing me how to place the mask over my nose properly, even after (again) I explained that I’ve been putting a mask on every night for the past two decades. Nothing you say will get these people to skip ahead in their script. I’m reminded of the time my wife and I walked into a car dealership with a cashier’s check in hand to buy my Ford Flex, and the poor salesman spent half an hour pitching us add-ons, additional coverage and financing options when the already-made-out check with the already-agreed-upon price was sitting on the desk in front of him. Toward the end of that experience the salesman admitted “I’m required to do this,” and I suspect the CPAP people operate under the same edict.
My old machine, a ResMed S9, used an SD-card to log my nightly usage. My new machine, an S11, uses a cellular modem to report my usage nightly. (For the record, every single person I’ve dealt with over the past four months has looked at me like I’m a caveman when I’ve tried to present them my SD card.) The new machine took about an hour to setup. Plugging in the power cord and connecting the hose took 30 seconds; the rest of the time was spent answering questions, completing a survey, scrolling through ads, downloading an app for my phone, setting up an account, connecting my machine to my phone via Bluetooth, answering all the same questions on the app that I just answered on the machine, and finally, FINALLY, going to bed.
To ensure there will be no benefit from hoarding old supplies, ResMed appears to have changed as much as possible. The shape of the S11’s power connection has changed, so I can’t reuse the spare adapter I bought for my old machine. The shape of the humidifier’s water reservoir has changed, so I can’t the old spares I had in a drawer. The connection on the end of the breathing hose is different, too, to ensure I can’t use my old one in a pinch. Finally, they changed the shape of the small filters that go in the rear of the machine, from square to rectangular. You would have to do a lot of work to convince me the state of sleep therapy has been improved by changing the shape of the small filter, rendering all my old ones useless.
I’m not thrilled with the amount of data the new system requires. It requests things like your height and weight so it can store your BMI, and I have no idea how secure its recordings of my sleep habits are. I assume the data’s encrypted when it leaves my house and I hope it’s being stored in a safe manner, but I can’t confirm those things. My last two machines operated just fine without gathering all that data and sending it to the cloud every night.
Also, every day, I now get a score. If I sleep long enough and well enough, I get a 100. I haven’t scored 100 yet, because I don’t sleep long enough and the machine doesn’t like that. It appears one night I lost a few points for turning the machine off in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. If I ever score 100, I hope there is a high score screen where I can enter my initials.
In the end it’s all about the sleep, and the new machine works just as well as the old one in that department. When the machine’s working its hardest, I’m fast asleep, and resting a bit easier now that I’m not worried about my old machine dying every single night.
Fun. I went through a similar procedure last year. My VPAP’s internal 3G cellular data modem became obsolete. New one’s exactly the same but has a new modem.
There’s an open-source app called OSCAR you can use to try to interpret the data on your SD card if you really want to fall asleep.