The PAPillow Story
Tracy R. Nasca and Elizabeth Johns
Tracy R. Nasca
Elizabeth Johns
There is nothing more rewarding than helping a sleep disorder patient achieve 100% therapeutic compliance and achieve good sleep. Once CPAP works and you get that old energy back, you are hooked, and who doesn't want to share good news and help others?
Since BIPAP has been a part of my life since 1989, I have tried nearly every nasal interface made. Some work better for me than others and I have my favorites. Still, there is no perfect mask, thus, therapeutic compliance is no easy task.
Through my involvement in sleep advocacy over the years, I have had the opportunity to correspond with thousands of sleep apnea patients. Chat rooms, email, snail mail and phone calls have continually focused on two common compliance issues... mask leak and pressure point soreness. Since most apnea patients are well advised to sleep on their side or stomach, many have mask leak problems due to their bed pillows despite having a nasal interface that is comfortable and well fitted.
Most newly diagnosed apnea patients are happy to finally learn the reason for their sleepiness and eager to get on with the business of treatment to regain energy. Frustration soon sets in when CPAP is delivered and the mask search begins. It's an educational process of trial and error to find the right interface and then learn to sleep with hurricane force winds blowing up your nose. It's not easy, many give up the fight.
You would think it would be a happy day when a newly diagnosed patient finally finds a mask that is comfortable, overcomes the strange feeling of sleeping while wearing a mask, and receives air delivery from CPAP. Frustration often sets in again, as the mask leaks in the normal course of side or stomach sleeping. All they want to do is sleep, why should this be so hard? It was bad enough waking up from apneas again and again, but now they are waking up all night long from mask leak! What's a person to do? They are already sleepy, moody, frustrated, how many more hurdles are there?
Over the years, I learned to scrunch up my regular bed pillow and create a void to allow my mask to lay off to the side to keep it from moving out of place and leaking. If I am lucky, this lasts for an hour. Then, I change positions or my bed pillow decides it has a life of its own and resumes its normal position, bounces back once again, causing the mask to move and leak, and waking me up over and over all night long. Then there was the problem of mask strap marks that seemed to stay imbedded across my face until noon, not to mention living with bruised cheekbones.
Hearing this complaint continually in our TalkAboutSleep.com chat rooms, a fellow sleep apnea patient and friend, Elizabeth Johns and I decided "enough is enough, let's do something about it"! Over a period of time Liz and I designed a specially shaped bed pillow that we felt would eliminate this very common mask leak problem. We named it PAPillow™ (pressure alleviating pillow). Not only does it alleviate mask leak for CPAP users, it is an incredibly comfortable bed pillow for any side or stomach sleeper.To test our invention, we sent dozens of PAPillows™ to sleep apnea patients. We refined our original design from this feedback and eventually patented our pillow. During testing, and quite by accident, we also discovered its usefulness for those children and adults experiencing discomfort or pain due to braces or other dental devices. One father wrote to say his teenage daughter, who wears braces, used his PAPillow™. Her braces caused painful cuts and bleeding inside her mouth. The PAPillow™ completely eliminated this problem. Another wrote to say his pregnant wife was advised by her doctor to side sleep after the 13th week and asked for another pillow as his wife had taken his.
The unique void area of our PAPillow™ allows freedom of mask movement, nasal cannula (a device used to deliver supplemental oxygen to a patient) freedom and allows the face to literally free itself from lying on the pillow. Yet, there is ample room for the head and neck to be supported and positioned comfortably. For different medical reasons, some people are advised to avoid sleeping on their back but find this difficult to do. For them, PAPillow makes side sleeping comfortable and an easy tool to break the habit of back sleeping.
The pillow has been available to the public since 2002. Each month we learn new uses for the pillow from the very people who buy and use them. Even people without sleep disorders find this a comfortable pillow. When we were in development of the pillow, we had no idea just how many people would come to benefit from its use and be kind enough to share their success stories.
The CPAP adjustment period is hard enough in the best of circumstances. Reaching 100% compliance is the goal for all apneaics. PAPillow™ is a simple solution to mask leak, one of the biggest compliance problems of mask leak. PAPillow™ is the perfect solution for use in the home, hospital, sleep lab, and nursing homes. Sleep on the edge, what could be simpler than that?