Hi - i'm new here but thought i'd throw in my two cents. Been a CH sufferer since my early 20's. i'm 40 now. Discovered O2 only about 4 or 5 years ago. it's been a blessing. Sometimes it's not 100% effective for me, but it has by far and away been the most effective for me. The cheap masks the company provides with my cylinders never really worked for me. A few years ago I realized the easiest thing to do was just pull the mask off the tube (or cut it if it's connected) and stick the tube right in your mouth like a straw. I like this method for several reasons. 1) no chance of anything but pure O2. 2) you can exhale through your mouth or nose. IF you exhale through your mouth you can breath out very quickly (in a second or two) and be breathing the O2 right back in. It will dry your mouth out much more quickly, throat, etc. but I just keep a little water handy and every minute or two just take a quick sip between breaths. I should set up a bubbler, but just never took the time. 3) I have to leave work a lot to go jump in my car during a cycle and breathe the O2 and i've found the tube to be so much less conspicuous. When i used the mask co-workers would come out and want to know what in the @#%@ hell was wrong that i was breathing from an O2 mask. Don't know about you all, but one of the truly tiring things about suffering from this hell is that so few people (except fellow sufferers or their families) have ever heard of this #$%@# condition. I'm on my eighth week of getting pounded daily, waking up at night, and getting really flipping depressed.
