Amongst the myriad of other illnesses and conditions I have, I also suffer with sleep apnoea.

Sleep apnoea is where your breathing repeatedly stops or becomes shallow during sleep. You can wake suddenly in the night with a reflex gasp or jolt as your body tries to restart normal breathing. Before treatment, it can leave you absolutely exhausted during the day.

That was happening to me.

To treat it, I was issued with a CPAP machine — a mask and device that keeps the airway open during sleep using continuous positive airway pressure.

Earlier this month, I went to see the sleep apnoea nurse because I was struggling with my old mask and becoming increasingly tired again. She issued me with a new mask (see image in this post), but honestly I just haven’t been able to get it working properly.

It has been blowing air here, blowing air there, leaking around the seal and generally waking me up more than helping me sleep.

Eventually I rang the sleep clinic again.

They actually provide a fantastic service. You leave a message on their answerphone and one of the nurses will call you back, talk things through properly and help however they can. If they cannot sort it over the phone, they will invite you in for another appointment.

They can even remotely access the CPAP machine itself because there is a mobile network card built into it which sends treatment data back to the clinic if needed.

One important thing with severe sleep apnoea in the UK is that if your daytime sleepiness becomes dangerous, you are legally required to inform the DVLA. They decide whether your tiredness is severe enough to affect driving safety.

I’m nowhere near that level thankfully. Mine is currently manageable.

Anyway, I had still been struggling this last week with the new mask, so I rang them again for advice and one of the nurses called me yesterday while I was at the gym café.

She was really helpful.

We talked everything through and she asked whether I wanted another appointment to come back in and see them again. In the end I actually said no. I want to persevere with this mask and equipment because I know it is a good mask and should work well once I get used to it properly.

I also think the seal is probably affected by shaving. If I shave more regularly, the mask should sit better against my skin and create a tighter seal around the cushion.

So for now the plan is simple:

Keep trying.
Keep adjusting.
Give it another couple of weeks.
See how things settle.

Sleep apnoea is one of those conditions people often joke about because of snoring, but untreated it can leave you deeply exhausted, mentally foggy and physically drained.

Hopefully this new setup eventually starts doing what it is supposed to do.