How can a person be kind. Loving or not lose their patience when you have kept up all night. It’s the disease is hard to understand on Little or no sleep.

My mom does not sleep at all sleep no more than 3 hours. With in 24 hrs. And talk to her self as if shes talking to some one with no phone at her ear and answer her self. shes up moving furniture in the middle of the night. She fall tonight walking in the dark while i was sleep .i hard an nosie she was on the floor trying to get her up at 230am off the floor in the morning. You help her up and she curise you out and still wont go to bed .she see people thats not there.she dont know her on children most of the time.she remeber everyone that is died and think you are them
Or claim people that she dont know made up people claim is her mother or sister.say where she live is not where she live. Can you give me some helpful adivice. Please! Am not getting rest my self. My pressure is up and down lately 241,218,189,221,156,179. I don 't want to put her in a home.. I
Love careing for her but not to this point were she dont care about me.and she wants to leave out antime day or night with pj's on never for get her pruse.some times she's good no proplems. But its getting worse.till she just not sleeping 5 days out of a week waking and talking like a drunk. Help me to help me and her. She mever cursed before now you every thing but who you are. Advise please to help use both.please reply back. Thanks for listening.

mom aged 97 recently broke her ankle and was also diagnosed with dementia. She calls for help constantly day and night. Sometimes she does in her sleep. Hard to tell when she really needs help. She refuses to use the call button, which would help us know she purposely called for help. We have animals and outside chores and the call button pager works on the entire property. We have been running to her room constantly day and night and we are exhausted. We are getting behind on lots of chores and animal care. We have done everything we can think of to make her comfortable, including lots of research to learn more. One of the problems is she has been really spoiled all her life, and is a narcissist. It makes it hard to know when she is being her manipulative and mean self or if she really needs some help. We do intend to get some part time help but the night calling out still needs resolved as does the behavior issue, is it real or just manipulation. I agree that so much focus is on spoiling the dementia loved one that it does not take into account maybe the loved one had behavior issues due too spoiling since she was a kid, made worse in her marriage. She has been asked to leave two facilities, so we just brought her home.

My mama has Lewy Body Dementia and a tumor on her brain stem. My brothers and sister don't help. I'm alone in takin care of my mama. She can no longer walk or sit up and I have to feed her most days so the food makes it to her mouth. I love mama so very much and I don't want to put her in the nursing home! I'm so tired. I have tried everything to keep mama awake during the day but it doesn't work! I am 51 yrs old and disabled. My back, legs, feet and hands CONSTANTLY hurt because of a truck wreck I was in. My mobile home is 80 ft long and mama's room is on the other end. I have a baby monitor so I can hear her in case something happens. Mama no longer knows me. She thinks I'm granny, mama's mother. So I hear mama...mama...Mama...MAMA all night and all day. I cry all the time, pray for God to help me, cry some more. I'm so tired.

Thank you! I am beyond exhausted :(

Hospice and also a nurse at the hospital told me that as a person gets older melatonin works less. Not sure if it's like that with everyone but melatonin doesn't work on mama. Nothing does. She has Lewy Body Dementia and a tumor on her brain stem. I'm so exhausted. I love my mama so much and I don't want to put her in a nursing home! I'm alone except 2 days a week when the cpn comes to bathe mama and the nurse checks her vitals. Then they're gone.

my 86 mother has Alzheimer's. She sleeps in her clothes on the sofa every night. she insists she slept in her bed. She scratches all the time. I have taken her to her doctor who prescribed antihistamine tablets. She makes pods all over the house filled with food, wet dishcloths, dirty underwear. Her handbag weighs a ton as it is stuffed full of food, toothbrush, underware, and all manner of rubbish. She will not cooperate with the carers who try and help her wash and change her clothes. I am going mad with it all, she can be very aggressive verbally. I have been told not to care so much where she sleeps or whether her clothes are clean etc. I am learning to let go emotionally.

I find that these articles tend to cover only the dementia patients and not the caregivers health. Chronic lack of sleep in any age group is disastrous. There needs to be better support for dementia sufferers for night time care/medication so that it does not negatively affect a caregiver who still has many years of work and life ahead of them! When weighing up the side effects of sleep aids, the health of the caregiver should also be a consideration.

TearBear, the inability to sleep is one of the factors that leads people to place their loved ones where there are three shifts of staff who can deal with this without losing sleep themselves -- they are on duty! The kind of place you have your mom in now may not be able to deal with this.

Was she able to sleep through the night before she went to this place? If so, perhaps things will get better as she adjusts to new routines. Have you discussed this problem with the doctor who is treating her dementia?

My Mom has Dementia, I just put her in assisted living and she is not sleeping at night, This assisted living is small and ran by a couple that just has relief people come in to give them a break, I choose this route because I live in a very small town in Montana and wanted Mom close. I do have her on some sleeping meds but they are not really working, I don't want my mom going to a nursing home, but I don't know if she can continue to stay where she is at. I don't want to have to bring her home, I'll have to quit my job of 17 years and give up retirement, but most of all my mom is so difficult even before dementia. HELP!

CarolF - THANK YOU!!!!! I use coconut oil and recommend it to my clients (both elderly and nutrition) for just this reason. If you don't have Dementia - start taking it NOW and feed your brain. :-)

Sorry, the last comment was written too fast and has lots of mistakes. Hope you can still read it. The sentence about Steve Newport should read "he went up to 18/30".

Tititmme~ it's funny you should mention the UTI, she had oneand prior to hav ing it diagonised she was acting really bizarre, that when I found out that UTI's have that affect on the elderly. My mom is the most stubborn person, she does not like to talke medicine, if she is prescribed it, she won't take it. It was fortunate that the UTI got addresses because she agreed to go to the hospital, and once she got there she had a fever, not sure if that was from the UTI or touch of pnuemonia.

Rebecca your lucky that your dad will take his meds, sometimes that hald the battle. Thanks for sharing with me both of you, it lets me know that I'm not trying to figure this out on my own, anf that helps!

We are using melatonin and it seems to work. My dad still trusts me most of the time and it helps that he has always taken evening meds. I got a prescription for sleeping meds from his doctor but am reluctant to use them till We absolutely need them he has not done well on central nervous system depressants in the past. A few weeks ago he had 5 or six nights with little sleep on my work nights thats when I asked for the script. It's so hard sometimes tryying not to take the next step because I know it adds to his decline. I know I have to take care of myself first, it's not always an easy choice.

I feel so bad for you Shelby, my mom luckily trusts me. However, getting her to take her regular medicine is sometimes a battle as she doesn't think she needs it. Is there any way you could have a person come in several nights a week just to care for her? I know I just went through a week long period were mom wouldn't sleep and was extremely confused, turns out she had a UTI. After a course of antibotics she is better.

I did consider Melatonin, for the same reason, unfortunately my mom has become very suspious and believe that I'm trying to kill her so she will not eat or take anything from me.

Am there right now so I totally understand. My mom's neurologist suggested Melatonin prior to bed. It is a natural supplement as I didn't want anytype of sleeping pills.

My experience with my mother having dementia has been interesting, I have three other siblings and the person I expected to step up and help out didn't. My youngest sister has been a true Godsend. I had been going weeks without sleeping because my mom has her time of day confused, sleeping during he day and awake at night.
I got so sick and tired of answering the same question, how is "mom" doing. If you really want to know how mom is doing come see her. No matter how many times I would say not good the question would be the same, what is she doing.
I finally got to the point where I no longer gave blow by blow details of what mom was/ is doing. They just didnt get it, until my yonger sister kept mom for a weekend to give me a break.
My younger sister understands now what living with mom is like, the erratic behavior, the constant waiting up with things packed because she believes that someone is coming to get her.
Mom has Lewy bodies dementia so she hallucinates, and has constant conversations with people that only she can see.
I am angry with my other siblings because I had to put together a schedule for them to get them to show up and help out with their own mother and give me time to go to work or to get a few hours away to go grocery shopping or just get time to myself.

This is an UGLY desease, if your parent was difficult a difficult person growing up, it's a crap shoot how they will be if they get dementia.

My condolences, Rose. It seems that one of the many disturbances in a person with dementia is the 'clock' that goes haywire. Each night I hope will be one of sleep, but 3-4 nights a week it is not. This is even with meds, but no sleeping aids. Doing this in our home for over a year now has shown me that you can depend on nothing to be the same on any given day or night; not attitude, ability to walk, talk, or sleep. One can usually depend on chaos and stress. Seeing my Mother with dementia has confirmed to me that random everything certainly occurs in the brain as it is burning out. That is the only thing that we can count on with Mother: Chaos and random behaviors. Sleep, or no sleep.

My Father had Dementia sadly he passed 4 months ago. I went through several Months of watching him not being able to sleep as well as myself being that I was the Primary Caregiver and on top of it all I had to work daily. I tried everthing possible to try and help my Father sleep at night from doing the exercise routine, keeping him up during the day and not allowing him to go to bed until 9 PM everynight. Still nothing worked he would still get right back up at 10, 12, and 1 AM. The Doctor advised me to give him nightly an ibuprofen and a benadryl please none of that worked.