[ambiate]

My friend recommended this long path for me. I laughed and asked what the end solution was: CPAP.

I ventured to craigslist and bought a used one for $100. I bought new gear off amazon. Google search led to the keystrokes to change the pressure myself. Few tweaks and I wake well rested rather than sleepy. Previously, I could sleep for 12 hours and still feel tired.

Friend is still waiting for their appointment to receive their machine two months later.

[smoothgrips]

I guess that is one way to do it. I don't know if I would do that myself. I went through the normal channels and here in SLC it went very smoothly. The thing with the "do it yourself" approach is, without the sleep study, you don't know what pressure to use. They use the analysis from the sleep study to determine what pressure to use. Also, you will consistently need to purchase new supplies on a regular basis. You'll be paying full price for those forever, whereas mine are covered by my insurance (since I went through the proper channels), so over time you will spend more money than I will.

[trevyn]

APAP is shown to calibrate as well as a sleep study, and at least in my case, it was pretty straightforward to find the right pressure by feel.

Personally, I did steps 2-4 above, got an APAP prescription valid until the end of time, and bought a new machine online. (Maybe insurance would reimburse? I didn't even bother; time is money too.)

[afarrell]

Why not both? Get a used one while you wait for your sleep study.

[ThrustVectoring]

What you did is basically my recommendation for people who suspect they have sleep apnea. IIRC, I cribbed this off of either Gwern or Eliezer Yudkowsky, who commented that buying a CPAP machine and seeing if it helped was cheaper and faster than getting a diagnosis.