She is at home with us and nightime becomes more demanding because of falls. She uses the toilet maybe 4 times at night even though we give her water mainly during the morning until mid-day.
Well, there is another option - a facility where the patient has a care team 24/7.
I've done the night nurse route. It's difficult because there's always some issue going on and it disturbs everyone else in the house.
We had wonderful in-home help, but I'd never do it again. One night I woke up to kitchen smells I can't describe. The caregiver was from a different culture, and she was cooking her dinner at 3 a.m. It might have been fried iguana. I didn't complain because she was a fine caregiver, but I could smell it in my upstairs room for days.
What you are describing is a person who needs 24/7 care in a facility where there's always someone on duty to help her.
A serious concern is that she may not be getting enough water to stay properly hydrated. I know what you're going through, and I understand why you're mainly giving her water in morning and until midday. It's not working, though - she still has to get up at night. And if she becomes dehydrated with your method, you've got an even worse problem. Dehydration is very serious in elders.
It can cause dizziness (another fall?). Muscle cramps (another fall?), headache, low blood pressure (another fall?), heart and kidney issues, clots, UTIs, delirium, the list goes on and on - even including death.
A care facility would know this and recognize signs that you won't. The truth is that you can no longer take care of her at home because you don't have the skills for it. That's not your fault, and I wish you luck. I hope you can find a place where she'll get the care she needs.
How "creative" can a caregiver be in the middle of the night when trying to get some well needed sleep? While the elder is up all night urinating, wandering around, or suffering from insomnia or a reversed circadian rhythm due to dementia? This is one of THE biggest issues caregivers face with in home care. Mobility issues are another form of difficulty bc falls and wheelchairs create more headaches and heartaches inside homes that are not handicap accessible as facilities are.
My mother had to move into Memory Care Assisted Living when her dementia, mobility issues and incontinence reached the point where regular AL could no longer manage her needs effectively. I certainly couldn't at home......her wheelchair wouldn't even fit inside one of my bathrooms. MC did a fine job caring for and managing all of her myriad needs and I slept at night and kept my marriage intact at the same time.
You can dress mom in an overnight Depends with an extra pad and not get her up to use the toilet at all......but once at 4 or 5 am for a brief change. That's what is normally done in managed care so the elder can sleep well, and so can you.
If theres an issue with using a brief, you may want to hire a nighttime caregiver at home or look into placement when exhaustion takes over. I wish you the best of luck with all of this. I know how hard it can be to deal with, and you have my sympathy.
Can’t do it alone! Need 24/7/365 and ideally 2 people so one can sleep and live in between. One friend let’s three people juggle the scheudule between them for a while - livein is essential here as well as family! my sisters in law managed FIL as a tag team for several years -
I have been on AC for a bit over four years. I have not seen creative answers to 24/7 caregiving. What I have seen falls more within the realm of survival. I will follow this thread to see who is out there doing 24/7 creatively.
I wish you luck in how you handle this at home . There is no real creativity to the night time problems you describe , other than a super absorbent overnight adult sized incontinence product , if/when she becomes incontinent .
She will be getting up for now . I also am concerned about dehydration . Does she urinate a lot in a “ go”, or frequent small amounts . Have you had her checked for UTI ? I don’t have an answer other than a night time aide, that may be problematic getting steady help .
The real creativity comes in when you are executing a plan to get her into a care facility . We can help with those questions as well . I hope you have POA is place .
I have nothing to offer from a creative basis, I would place her in a home where she could get 24/7 care as her dementia will only get worse and your life will as well the longer you care for her at home.
You are describing a situation more challenging than my own, but just in case this helps… What about a motion detector? After my mom’s falls when she has needed 24/7 help, I’ve placed a motion detector on the floor near her bed or chair. The minute she starts jiggling her walker the alarm alerts me. In the interim, I get to sleep or just be relieved of the anxiety of constant monitoring. (Warning: these alarms are *loud*. If you’re not a heavy sleeper, you don’t need it to be this loud and can swaddle the remote speaker to bring the volume down a bit.) Sorry I don’t have any other suggestions to offer. Maybe try searching the archives of this forum? Or the web generally? People’s shared tips online have been incredibly helpful to me. Maybe there’s something out there that would help you. Take care and good luck.
it takes a village. And a long term care plan. we are trying to abide by moms desire to age in place in her home. mom is 90+ agile and strong with early - moderate ALZ and otherwise healthy. She worked until 2 years ago in a “part time hobby job” (med tech) after retiring from county service. She has LTC insurance for in home care which we started using in March ‘23 We are working toward 24/7 coverage - paid family member cares for her m-f 9a-7p and a hired caregiver stays from Friday night to Monday am. she has small children mom loves when they visit. The younger one will spend the weekend. (mom loves having young people around and coloring with them.) M-F evenings a family member is available as needed. she gets up 1-2 times at night and is able to get to and from BR. We will soon need ON person M-F We have ties to area universities and have identified potential student to live in rent free as a backup for safety monitoring. (Mom has had students from the college she worked at live in for companionship after Dad died). we have a contract with a staffing agency identified through this website that can place folks as needed for backup or permanent. Mom has had a home security system since dad passed that we enhanced with door bell and in home cameras that alerts us on our phones to motion and cameras detect sound. Throughout the house - door open / door closed alerts, door bell camera, kitchen, bedroom, den cameras - more cameras can be added for $150-200 each. We can speak to the cameras from our phones. (Ie when she leaves phone off the hook). She usually remembers to put in her hearing aids - and charge them! (new ones don’t need batteries -rah). Meals and pills are administered by caregivers - but mom take them from a small glass next to her plate at breakfast and dinner. we are 3 adult children (bro, me and hubby in our 60s) living nearby - mom is 90+. Hubby and I took 5 day vacation a 5 hour drive away with bro covering.
Mom lives in a close knit community with a dear friend on the same ten home deadend street receiving in home care 24/7. She cultivated close relationships with neighbors and others that are like family over the years. Her “sister”visits weekly, former neighbors take her out 2x monthly. one neighbor takes out her trash another is in law enforcement and keeps watch…. His wife and children visit mom. Tonite she’s going to dinner with dear friend and her aid will make sure she gets home.
we see her often (not as often as she’d like but I’m still working as a consultant) and my brother works most days out of an office in her basement. our lawyer has options for continuity through trust. this takes foresight, long term planning and a village of care. You can’t be the backup and the plan - and I recommend a backup to your backup plan.
We also have lots of experience - when we were first married, I worked in senior center, hubby and I lived in the second floor of 2 family and helped my grandmother care for gramps. He also had a pt nurse. When he passed we continued to live above gram her into her mid-90s -(we paid the oil bill) she had Medicare home Care M-F days. (No longer exists as a benefit) We used a baby monitor at night. After 12 years, we were able to afford a down payment and moved to our own place. Gram moved in with mom. Mom and dad had already taken care of MIL when I was a teen - hiring livein caregiver. Her children are like family to us. mom always had live-in caregiver and other supports for both her mom and MIL and for Dad ( that was a much longer and painful journey). Mom got the LTC insurance and set up financial accounts so she could have needed care in her own home and not move in with us. Get help. There’s hope and your need a plan. Then taking this one day at a time. It’s all you get anyway.
I also put a rectangular pillow - about 36" x 6" - along the side of the bed that makes it a bit more difficult for her to crawl over, thus slowing her down and giving me time to get to her. I will sometimes back a chair up to the side of the bed to slow her down as well.
In addition to that, I put her walker out of reach.
Of course, I have to wake up suddenly or drop what I'm going and gallop up to the bedroom but it at least gives me some freedom.
I also use this baby monitor but it's not as vital as the bed alarm.
Aaand... I have this camera in her bedroom. It enables me to go a little bit farther away than the other two monitors, so I can walk up and down my street in the evenings for my "decompression walk" when she has gone to sleep and still keep watch on her. (Maybe that's living dangerously, but it's more dangerous for me to neglect my health.)
During the day, she is out of bed from 11:30 am until 5:30 on average. I put her in the kitchen in a comfy chair and she eats and drinks and sits there and yells my name incessantly. She doesn't always like it and wants to go lie down but it's the best solution to tiring her out when she is so sedentary.
The last thing I do before bedtime is give her one CBD gummy to calm her. She is not on any pharmaceuticals and I'm holding off on those until things get unmanageable. She is under Hospice care and they are constantly pushing Ativan. If I give her Ativan, it would be for me and not her which I'm not okay with as of now.
I don't know how creative those things are, but they have made caring for my mother at least somewhat bearable.
You have some helpful strategies in place. It's still a lot of work and constant vigilance on your part, but congratulations on figuring out some useful ways of coping.
Bed alarm is excellent idea. Nighttime caregiver (10pm-8am) - although expensive Encourage peeing in bed and change in morning. Sounds like she needs to be in a facility where she can be monitored more regularly.
I don't know how you sleep if interrupted 3-4 x / night. How do you function if you need to be 'on' all hours of the night?
Have her checked for UTI or bladder/kidney issues to rule out any issues like that. If she’s clear from infection, ask Dr about meds for overactive bladder to take at bedtime.
Will she wear incontinence under garment at night, like PullUps or Depends? Or try pads where she sleeps and change them each morning. Of course that leads to more work/laundry from her nightgown and sheets the next day if there’s leakage.
Be sure that you have shared these dynamics with her PCP who may be able to assess her further for additional possible meds to help.
Call Hospice and have her assessed for hospice admit appropriateness; if she meets hospice criteria, I suggest that you accept hospice services of your choice as they can provide you with a broad range of care to assist and also can provide " respite care" for 5 days and nights at a facility for the family to have a break.
The social worker with hospice ( or other licensed social worker if you do not choose hospice) can also help you navigate potential facility placement options for your consideration.
There is sadly no " creative" ways to provide 24/7 care unless one can afford to pay for in home care 24/7 or some chunk of that time especially at night .
Even if your family is rotating helping, this is not usually a viable solution for the " night" issues you are describing.
I would not call myself creative. Observant, maybe, but definitely not creative.
1. We enlisted an agency to provide a nighttime caregiver, just to help her out of bed and go to wherever she wanted to go. My Mom would sleepwalk, sleeptalk and sleepeat. It was when she was sleepwalking that she was most likely to fall...and it was on the straight walk after rounding the bed and before turning to go to the bathroom where the falls occurred. She fell straight down and slightly to one side. She did not fall forward or backward or severely to one side. It was more of a crumple. You couldn't easily tell that she was in this "sleep" state. We didn't realize she was sleeping during these times until a few times, she got really, really angry and started intensely arguing, then 2 minutes later, was wondering why she was where she was. My Mom didn't like the caregivers as she felt they didn't do anything other than watch her sleep, yet she would holler and complain loudly if they were not there to help her out of bed. As you can guess, it was very hard to keep caregivers.
2. Withholding water or liquids did not help. She woke up for any number of reasons, and her routine, prior to dementia, was to go to the bathroom upon waking. Dementia just reinforced the routine. She would routinely go over 20x in a night, usually between the hours of midnight and 4 am. She would get up because she was hungry, because she was not tired, because she needed to urinate, because her back hurt, because her arm itched, because she was worried about something that happened in her life. She would also wake up because of her dream at the time. Whereas most of us would go back to sleep after this type of disturbance, my Mom would actually run through her routine, only to get out of bed less than a minute later and do the routine again.....4-5 times in succession. She said she woke up one time a night.
3. A bed alarm does help. However, it also means that one must not be a sound sleeper. My Mom's MC unit uses a bed alarm on her bed.
4. My Mom's nose is very sensitive. A bedside commode is hard for her to get onto, and the smell would keep my Mom awake. Knowing her, she would then try to clean the bedside commode, which would be even more of a fall risk at night.
5. Just a slight change of the temperature of the room, or the on/off run of the fan of the air conditioner would wake her up. Hence, her room became a sauna at night. We had to make sure that a fan for the caregivers, did not blow air across my Mom's bed, or that would wake her up also.
6. For the fall risk, if she isn't on PT, get her to PT. They (and you) can work with her to strengthen her abs, leg muscles and balance so that she isn't as likely to fall. The added benefit is that she becomes more tired at night. If possible, make her more active during the day, again so that her muscles are in better shape so that she is less of a fall risk....and the byproduct, that she will be able to sleep better.
7. In order to make the caregivers "special", there were certain things that only they could provide to her. For instance, she only got massages from them. She only got certain fruit when they were on duty. That way, they were indispensable to her.
I drew the line at incontinence. For some reason, there would be a puddle, yet her Depends was dry. I have no idea how that happened. About a year later, she would wipe up the urine from the floor, then put it back with the clean or dirty clothes, wherever she got the cloth from.
My Mom is now in Memory Care. I no longer have the uncertainty of whether the caregiver is coming, managing their activities, and listening to my mother complain about the caregiver of the night.
She still leaks, however, after 1.5 years in MC (5 years in total), it appears that the nighttime wake-ups are occurring less.
WhackP: Perhaps the "demands" of attempting to care for the elder at home outweigh any creativity. Maybe it's due time for managed care facility living, else the caregiver obtains minimal sleep.
Mom lives with us since my dad passed last year. I am her primary caregiver. Amazon is wonderful and I have purchased many items to assist with her care and also items to help keep her safe and prevent falls. We buy depends undergarments and have washable bed pads both under the sheet and over as well as on her recliner. Mom is in a downstairs den we converted to her bedroom so no stairs are involved. She has extreme difficulty safely walking on her own but it does happen occasionally so I have a door alarm installed so if she opens her bedroom door the alarm goes off in my bedroom and I can intercept her before she even leaves her room. This has happened twice and prevented her from falling as I was alerted right away. Just installed a bed rail so she doesn’t roll out as one night she was half hanging out of bed head first. We have a portable potty which she needs 100% assistance using. I use regular small or medium size white trash bags and put some clean toilet paper in to absorb urine which is so much cheaper and just as effective instead of commode liners. I use a baby wipes warmer with a night light so it’s more comfortable for her as well as a paper towel holder which holds multiple rolls of toilet paper. I buy disposable gloves from Costco. I have easy to use locks on our lever handle doors so she doesn’t inadvertently open the basement door thinking it’s the bathroom. I have a door guardian lock (confounding) on the front door so she cannot open. I also have a typical baby doorknob cover on the back door. A baby camera is A MUST and has allowed us more freedom to leave her alone briefly when running local errands while she is napping. Also Mom is fortunate to afford a home health aid 4 hrs a day in the morning 6 days a week that helps with all ADL’s such as bathing, laundry, meal, medication etc. since he is homebound, we now have a visiting physician service that has a nurse visit once a month and has coordinated both lab work, occupational and physical therapy, podiatry visits all covered by Medicare. She recently started showing signs of sundowning which caused her to wake at night yelling and not making sense. I would reassure and comfort her until she calmed down but it seriously disrupted my sleep. I found dissolvable melatonin tablets worked fantastic and help her sleep through the night giving ME a full nights sleep as well. Melatonin doesn’t work immediately so I give her 5mg about 8 pm with her last pill around the time she gets into bed to watch TV. Also setting the TV timer to go off after a set time is extremely helpful since I fall asleep earlier than she does. The baby camera connects to my phone so when I wake at night I can check on her as well.
This is what elder care is once you move the person into your house. The only thing you can do is hire a night nurse for help.
I've done the night nurse route. It's difficult because there's always some issue going on and it disturbs everyone else in the house.
We had wonderful in-home help, but I'd never do it again. One night I woke up to kitchen smells I can't describe. The caregiver was from a different culture, and she was cooking her dinner at 3 a.m. It might have been fried iguana. I didn't complain because she was a fine caregiver, but I could smell it in my upstairs room for days.
A serious concern is that she may not be getting enough water to stay properly hydrated. I know what you're going through, and I understand why you're mainly giving her water in morning and until midday. It's not working, though - she still has to get up at night. And if she becomes dehydrated with your method, you've got an even worse problem. Dehydration is very serious in elders.
It can cause dizziness (another fall?). Muscle cramps (another fall?), headache, low blood pressure (another fall?), heart and kidney issues, clots, UTIs, delirium, the list goes on and on - even including death.
A care facility would know this and recognize signs that you won't. The truth is that you can no longer take care of her at home because you don't have the skills for it. That's not your fault, and I wish you luck. I hope you can find a place where she'll get the care she needs.
My mother had to move into Memory Care Assisted Living when her dementia, mobility issues and incontinence reached the point where regular AL could no longer manage her needs effectively. I certainly couldn't at home......her wheelchair wouldn't even fit inside one of my bathrooms. MC did a fine job caring for and managing all of her myriad needs and I slept at night and kept my marriage intact at the same time.
You can dress mom in an overnight Depends with an extra pad and not get her up to use the toilet at all......but once at 4 or 5 am for a brief change. That's what is normally done in managed care so the elder can sleep well, and so can you.
If theres an issue with using a brief, you may want to hire a nighttime caregiver at home or look into placement when exhaustion takes over. I wish you the best of luck with all of this. I know how hard it can be to deal with, and you have my sympathy.
and live in between. One friend let’s three people juggle the scheudule between them for a while -
livein is essential here as well as family!
my sisters in law managed FIL as a tag team for several years -
She will be getting up for now . I also am concerned about dehydration . Does she urinate a lot in a “ go”, or frequent small amounts . Have you had her checked for UTI ? I don’t have an answer other than a night time aide, that may be problematic getting steady help .
The real creativity comes in when you are executing a plan to get her into a care facility . We can help with those questions as well . I hope you have POA is place .
we are trying to abide by moms desire to age in place in her home. mom is 90+ agile and strong with early - moderate ALZ and otherwise healthy. She worked until 2 years ago in a “part time hobby job” (med tech) after retiring from county service.
She has LTC insurance for in home care which we started using in March ‘23 We are working toward 24/7 coverage - paid family member cares for her m-f 9a-7p and a hired caregiver stays from Friday night to Monday am. she has small children mom loves when they visit. The younger one will spend the weekend. (mom loves having young people around and coloring with them.)
M-F evenings a family member is available as needed. she gets up 1-2 times at night and is able to get to and from BR. We will soon need ON person M-F
We have ties to area universities and have identified potential student to live in rent free as a backup for safety monitoring. (Mom has had students from the college she worked at live in for companionship after Dad died).
we have a contract with a staffing agency identified through this website that can place folks as needed for backup or permanent.
Mom has had a home security system since dad passed that we enhanced with door bell and in home cameras that alerts us on our phones to motion and cameras detect sound. Throughout the house - door open / door closed alerts, door bell camera, kitchen, bedroom, den cameras - more cameras can be added for $150-200 each. We can speak to the cameras from our phones. (Ie when she leaves phone off the hook). She usually remembers to put in her hearing aids - and charge them! (new ones don’t need batteries -rah). Meals and pills are administered by caregivers - but mom take them from a small glass next to her plate at breakfast and dinner.
we are 3 adult children (bro, me and hubby in our 60s) living nearby - mom is 90+.
Hubby and I took 5 day vacation a 5 hour drive away with bro covering.
Mom lives in a close knit community with a dear friend on the same ten home deadend street receiving in home care 24/7. She cultivated close relationships with neighbors and others that are like family over the years. Her “sister”visits weekly, former neighbors take her out 2x monthly. one neighbor takes out her trash another is in law enforcement and keeps watch…. His wife and children visit mom. Tonite she’s going to dinner with dear friend and her aid will make sure she gets home.
we see her often (not as often as she’d like but I’m still working as a consultant) and my brother works most days out of an office in her basement.
our lawyer has options for continuity through trust.
this takes foresight, long term planning and a village of care. You can’t be the backup and the plan - and I recommend a backup to your backup plan.
We also have lots of experience - when we were first married, I worked in senior center, hubby and I lived in the second floor of 2 family and helped my grandmother care for gramps.
He also had a pt nurse. When he passed we continued to live above gram her into her mid-90s -(we paid the oil bill) she had Medicare home Care M-F days. (No longer exists as a benefit) We used a baby monitor at night.
After 12 years, we were able to afford a down payment and moved to our own place. Gram moved in with mom. Mom and dad had already taken care of MIL when I was a teen - hiring livein caregiver. Her children are like family to us.
mom always had live-in caregiver and other supports for both her mom and MIL and for Dad ( that was a much longer and painful journey).
Mom got the LTC insurance and set up financial accounts so she could have needed care in her own home and not move in with us.
Get help. There’s hope and your need a plan. Then taking this one day at a time. It’s all you get anyway.
A bed alarm has been a lifesaver for me. When my mother raises her shoulders off the bed, it wakes me up so I can get to her.
I carry that annoying monitor around with me everywhere - while cutting grass, while sleeping, wherever I go when she is in the bed.
https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Caregiver-Wireless-Alarm-System/dp/B07RCYD69T/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=smart+caregiver+wireless+bed+alarm&qid=1688036139&sr=8-1-spons&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1
I also put a rectangular pillow - about 36" x 6" - along the side of the bed that makes it a bit more difficult for her to crawl over, thus slowing her down and giving me time to get to her. I will sometimes back a chair up to the side of the bed to slow her down as well.
In addition to that, I put her walker out of reach.
Of course, I have to wake up suddenly or drop what I'm going and gallop up to the bedroom but it at least gives me some freedom.
I also use this baby monitor but it's not as vital as the bed alarm.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CZLWGNC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Aaand... I have this camera in her bedroom. It enables me to go a little bit farther away than the other two monitors, so I can walk up and down my street in the evenings for my "decompression walk" when she has gone to sleep and still keep watch on her. (Maybe that's living dangerously, but it's more dangerous for me to neglect my health.)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B28H2DFZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
During the day, she is out of bed from 11:30 am until 5:30 on average. I put her in the kitchen in a comfy chair and she eats and drinks and sits there and yells my name incessantly. She doesn't always like it and wants to go lie down but it's the best solution to tiring her out when she is so sedentary.
The last thing I do before bedtime is give her one CBD gummy to calm her. She is not on any pharmaceuticals and I'm holding off on those until things get unmanageable. She is under Hospice care and they are constantly pushing Ativan. If I give her Ativan, it would be for me and not her which I'm not okay with as of now.
I don't know how creative those things are, but they have made caring for my mother at least somewhat bearable.
Nighttime caregiver (10pm-8am) - although expensive
Encourage peeing in bed and change in morning.
Sounds like she needs to be in a facility where she can be monitored more regularly.
I don't know how you sleep if interrupted 3-4 x / night.
How do you function if you need to be 'on' all hours of the night?
Gena / Touch Matters
Will she wear incontinence under garment at night, like PullUps or Depends? Or try pads where she sleeps and change them each morning. Of course that leads to more work/laundry from her nightgown and sheets the next day if there’s leakage.
Call Hospice and have her assessed for hospice admit appropriateness; if she meets hospice criteria, I suggest that you accept hospice services of your choice as they can provide you with a broad range of care to assist and also can provide " respite care" for 5 days and nights at a facility for the family to have a break.
The social worker with hospice ( or other licensed social worker if you do not choose hospice) can also help you navigate potential facility placement options for your consideration.
There is sadly no " creative" ways to provide 24/7 care unless one can afford to pay for in home care 24/7 or some chunk of that time especially at night .
Even if your family is rotating helping, this is not usually a viable solution for the " night" issues you are describing.
Speak with her PCP ( doctor) ASAP
1. We enlisted an agency to provide a nighttime caregiver, just to help her out of bed and go to wherever she wanted to go. My Mom would sleepwalk, sleeptalk and sleepeat. It was when she was sleepwalking that she was most likely to fall...and it was on the straight walk after rounding the bed and before turning to go to the bathroom where the falls occurred. She fell straight down and slightly to one side. She did not fall forward or backward or severely to one side. It was more of a crumple. You couldn't easily tell that she was in this "sleep" state. We didn't realize she was sleeping during these times until a few times, she got really, really angry and started intensely arguing, then 2 minutes later, was wondering why she was where she was. My Mom didn't like the caregivers as she felt they didn't do anything other than watch her sleep, yet she would holler and complain loudly if they were not there to help her out of bed. As you can guess, it was very hard to keep caregivers.
2. Withholding water or liquids did not help. She woke up for any number of reasons, and her routine, prior to dementia, was to go to the bathroom upon waking. Dementia just reinforced the routine. She would routinely go over 20x in a night, usually between the hours of midnight and 4 am. She would get up because she was hungry, because she was not tired, because she needed to urinate, because her back hurt, because her arm itched, because she was worried about something that happened in her life. She would also wake up because of her dream at the time. Whereas most of us would go back to sleep after this type of disturbance, my Mom would actually run through her routine, only to get out of bed less than a minute later and do the routine again.....4-5 times in succession. She said she woke up one time a night.
3. A bed alarm does help. However, it also means that one must not be a sound sleeper. My Mom's MC unit uses a bed alarm on her bed.
4. My Mom's nose is very sensitive. A bedside commode is hard for her to get onto, and the smell would keep my Mom awake. Knowing her, she would then try to clean the bedside commode, which would be even more of a fall risk at night.
5. Just a slight change of the temperature of the room, or the on/off run of the fan of the air conditioner would wake her up. Hence, her room became a sauna at night. We had to make sure that a fan for the caregivers, did not blow air across my Mom's bed, or that would wake her up also.
6. For the fall risk, if she isn't on PT, get her to PT. They (and you) can work with her to strengthen her abs, leg muscles and balance so that she isn't as likely to fall. The added benefit is that she becomes more tired at night. If possible, make her more active during the day, again so that her muscles are in better shape so that she is less of a fall risk....and the byproduct, that she will be able to sleep better.
7. In order to make the caregivers "special", there were certain things that only they could provide to her. For instance, she only got massages from them. She only got certain fruit when they were on duty. That way, they were indispensable to her.
I drew the line at incontinence. For some reason, there would be a puddle, yet her Depends was dry. I have no idea how that happened. About a year later, she would wipe up the urine from the floor, then put it back with the clean or dirty clothes, wherever she got the cloth from.
My Mom is now in Memory Care. I no longer have the uncertainty of whether the caregiver is coming, managing their activities, and listening to my mother complain about the caregiver of the night.
She still leaks, however, after 1.5 years in MC (5 years in total), it appears that the nighttime wake-ups are occurring less.