Night moans. What can we do to understand and help?
Question: new symptom of moaning loudly in sleep, what can we do to understand and help?
Morning,
H and I are caring for his mom, late stage Alzheimer's. Recently she had a 3 week stay in a nursing home for sudden food allergy to dairy.
**If u find yourself suddenly swimming in a sea of your lo's diarrhea, consider dairy allergy (☝before u consider a jump off a bridge because that diarrhea, from the bowels of the pit of Hell, is the last thing u needed) It comes on kind of suddenly, and I understand it happens a lot, even to ppl that never had the problem**
Ug, anyway, since she's been home, she's been moaning in her sleep almost nightly. Last night was terrible. Our old cat was disturbed by it enough to stay next to me all night.
The moaning gets very loud. Although she doesn't appear to be in pain, she is far past being able to express pain of any kind (btw, her doctor is a total a**! We asked about her moving into a hospice situation, but he said, during a teleconference appointment, she was far from that. Right, that's why she spends most her life, sleeping in a fetal position, she's just fine. He promised palliative care, but that consisted of a snail-mailed script for a nebulizer for us to get "from any medical supply store" He's a loser, BUT ....oops, stress-steam escaping, where the heck was i? Lol)
Is this something that we can help with, or is this a new normal? Wouldn't a hospice or palliative nurse be better able to determine what's going on here and how to comfort her?
Thanks for lending an ear & hoping u all have a decent day💞
7 Answers
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"Catathrenia is the medical term for groaning during sleep. Persons with this condition emit long, sometimes loud groans on exhalation or out-breathing."
But what to do about it I don't know!! 🤔 😩
Low oxygen levels at night?
I read about 'reverse snoring' where the noise is made when exhaling.
A pulse oximeter can be used for a quick test or continuous monitoring, clips on finger. (Healthy O2 is 95-100%).
Does she sleep flat? If propped up a bit, I wonder would that change/reduce the moaning?
My mother just turned 95 and has advanced dementia but her other 12 diseases are not 'advanced' enough to fit into one of the hospice (Medicare) categories for approval (for terminal disease). So this is the one they used to get her approved this time: "Senile Degeneration of the Brain" So that is the Medicare approved category YOUR hospice team can use to approve YOUR MIL if she doesn't have another terminal disease that will kill her (in their estimation) w/i the next 6 months.
Get Doctor Strangelove to write an order for an evaluation. If not, call a hospice company yourself and ask for an evaluation. If they turn her down even WITH the evaluation I gave you above, wait a month or two and ask again. That's what happened with my mother; she Sundowns something fierce in the afternoon so I asked for her 2nd hospice evaluation to be done in the afternoon vs . the morning. The nurse was shocked at her aggressive, teeth-baring behavior that afternoon & BOOM, she was accepted! So yeah, now mom has drugs to calm her down every 6 hours and as needed which has made a world of difference, thank God. No morphine and all that jazz we hear about "OMG hospice is killing my mother" b/c she's not at that point yet. But if/when she gets there, bring it on. Extending their lives with THIS level of dementia is the CRUEL thing in my opinion.
Who knows why your MIL is moaning in her sleep now? Tell the doctor you feel she's experiencing a lot of PAIN and that's why she's moaning. And that she needs a hospice eval stat b/c she's declining dramatically on a daily basis which is NOT something HE can possibly determine from a 'telehealth' visit fgs, get a grip! You gotta love how these frightened doctors are playing doctor over video calls these days & handing out diagnoses w/o laying a hand on their patients. How do you spell BOGUS?
Wishing you the best of luck!
If YOU and DH want to keep her home, you need LOTS of help.
You most certainly can contact a hospice on your own.
You most certainly can, if you can FIND ONE, request a second opinion from a geriatric specialist or a visiting nurse.
New Normal? No words for that thought. You certainly do sound like a really REALLY GOOD DAUGHTER INLAW.
"Right, that's why she spends most her life bedridden life in a fetal positionshe's just fine."
Looks like you know that the fetal position means Mom is nearing the end. You can call a Hospice facility and ask for an evaluation. If Mom fits the criteria, they then can get her doctor to sign off or if they have a Dr associated with them that Dr. can sign off.