Hi everyone,
I’ve posted here before about my Papa. He’s now 91 and still lives alone, which is a battle of will. He is now almost completely blind and very hard of hearing (doesn’t like his expensive hearing aides). He is so extremely bored that he sleeps on and off during the day. Or he will go to bed at 6pm. Sometimes he sleeps through the night. But, other times he’s up at 2am, confused if it’s 2am or 2pm. Same thing with the naps.
Sometimes, he won’t recognize his surroundings when he wakes. Advice says to keep him stimulated during the day so he doesn’t sleep, but how? He’s blind, deaf, and can barely walk. He can’t see the TV and can only listen to it on volume 80. I’m out of ideas, anyone out there have any?
I read about a facility in NY that provides Nightcare services, works like a daycare, but only at night. The participants excel under these conditions.
We tried it out this weekend here at home, let him stay up all night and do whatever he wanted all night, sleep in as much as he wished. He got 9 hrs total sleep Sat and Sun nights. Has made an incredible change in attitude, cognition, and character. No more "shadow creatures" coming out to attack him at night!! This afternoon he is like his old self about 3 years ago, WOW!!!
We have made the decision here at our home that we won't force our sleep schedule on him, rather cater his schedule to meet his new sleeping cycle.
We are sitting down as we speak figuring out what that means for our family, but daycare is definitely getting dropped as he just doesn't get the sleep he needs by attending their program. Everyone needs to sleep, and we need to make sure he gets the sleep when he needs it.
In your case I would think about what his "normal sleep cycle" is, make sure that he is able to sleep those hours that he wants too, and schedule activities around those times to keep him active while awake. If the TV bothers you at night like it does us, we are setting up remote speakers next to his pillows on the wall to allow our loved one to watch TV without keeping the whole house awake. We are also thinking about having someone come in and spend a few hours every night with him during his awake period so we can be rested as well.
All that said I'm not sure how to get around the boredom thing without trips to the community center or adult care center daily or every few days, it's an ongoing problem with my mom as well but she has now stopped all of her out of the house activities (that aren't with one of us) by choice and I worry about this a lot. There was a recent study done that concluded isolation is as harmful to your health as smoking, mom was so pissed at me for telling her about it! Lol My point being there is only so much we can do and mom anyway is happier isolated, I don't get it and her speech gets much worse but we are in touch with her several times a day and she does have tenants she sees here and there so it's a battle not worth fighting at this point for us. I do think it contributes to her time confusion though. Oh and she likes to listen to her radio but gets much better sleep when she turns it and the lights off at night, she has a habit of not doing that and it makes for a bad nights sleep. Mom is also deaf in one ear, has been most of her life and has maybe 50% in the other, doesn't like to wear her hearing aid either. My brother got her set up with some headphones and earbuds for watching tv with him and for watching things on the ipad which she enjoys and that works really well for her, you might give something like that a try.