I've been prescribed oxygen and my mask arrived today - with no bag attached. The company said that a bag isn't needed or would make the oxygen not work for the cluster headache.

The company doesn't seem very well informed on cluster headaches in the first place, so I wanted to check here. Should I fight with the company to get a mask with a bag, or will it work fine?

For 02 to work, your lungs must get only 100% pure oxygen. No outside air, no exhaled air. The bag stores a bunch of 02 as the regulator hisses away, you take a big breath of pure 02 outta the bag, and when you exhale the flapper valve lets the air out as your bag refills...that's the system.

Try your mask and see if it helps but I suspect it will not. If it does not work, make your own mask. Take a one gallon ziplok bag. Cut a teeny hole in the bottom and run your 02 line into it. Tape it up air tight. Cut a hole in the top, put in a toilet paper cardboard tube or a paper towel tube, tape it up tight. You are now the proud owner of a non re breather mask. Let the bag fill, inhale out of it and cover the tube, exhale and repeat.

Go to the general board, near the top it says optimasks now available, order one of those if your doc's won't help you out.

Joe

I've been on at least two cycles with O2 and no bag. So its not essential. But in those cases I taped up the mask so I wasn't breathing in an air from outside of the mask, and lifted the mask when exhaling so that no CO2 would stay in the mask. The bag clearly makes it easier.

For someone like me who has taken a cue from some of the power O2 users here and hyperventilates O2, a BIG  trash bag sized bag attached to the mask is necessary!

It took me some experimentation to get the 'ol big bag action rigged up and working right, but I'm kinda dumb when it comes to that sort of stuff.