First of all, I'm NOT qualified to give medical advice.
I'm just going to tell you about what I HAD to do.
I've had sleep apnea for years, decades.
If you are not seen by a sleep doctor every year your prescription expires and you can no longer just walk into a medical supply place and buy your supplies.
I know this because once I got a cpap machine set up, I just went on auto pilot and skipped the yearly check up. Believe me, you know if your machine is working and if it is? This is an easy trap to slip into.
I got to be pretty good at buying supplies on e-bay. They can't sell a complete mask as that is regulated by prescription. But you can buy piece by piece and I got by like that for decades, no kidding.
One day my old cpap quit running and I was up the creek without a paddle. I have to drive an hour and a half to work every morning and an hour and a half to get home in the afternoon. I knew that this would be a certain death sentence for me because there was no way I could stay awake without sleeping with my cpap.
I called every sleep clinic within driving distance and it was no dice on an immediate emergency appointment. I was at least two weeks out on getting an appointment. I called in sick a couple of days when it dawned on me that if I was going to find a solution, like everything else in life, it would be up to me.
I can't begin to tell you all of the stuff I have fixed by getting on the internet and watching YouTube videos....why not fix myself?
One excuse I can offer for my negligence is that even after my insurance paid, I ended up owing my sleep clinics nearly a thousand bucks out of pocket for my cpap machine.....read that a case of Red Keester.
Well, you can find everything you ever wanted on the internet. I found a great forum, sort of like this one. Everything the sleep doctor never told you, and then some. Like for example, did your sleep clinic ever tell you how to adjust the pressure or other settings on your cpap? Why not, you bought it!
I knew that my past cpap machines ended up costing around $1,500.00 bucks (ouch).
Now, suppose you have a lot of time on your hands (retired) or you don't like the idea of paying three times the cost of a cpap machine?
All I did was take responsibility for my own health and I found the answers I needed on the internet. I also learned how I could have a A-PAP machine delivered to my house, next day air for $350.00....brand new. I also learned how to set it up and how to use a program called "Sleepy Head" that allows me to take the sims card out of my A-PAP and download it into my laptop to measure every single breath I take during my sleep sessions.
I kept that appointment I had with the sleep doctor because I wanted to make sure I had my condition documented as a preexisting condition.
The doctor couldn't believe what I had done. He asked where I got my A-PAP, which is an automatically adjustable pressure machine that is a Cadillac of machines. I told him what my settings were and what my results were. They then took my sims card and checked it themselves and I was spot on.
I'm NOT providing this information to you as medical advice and I'm not sharing the websites with you. Any moron can find them, I proved it myself.
I am responsible for my own health.
Sleeping on your back can be a good thing. 
