I mentioned the other day that Mom was leaving her light on at night. We finally hit a critical point where Mom was waking up earlier every day. During the day she would sleep so deeply in her chair that she thought it was the next day!
It became obvious that the light at night and the gray days were causing her internal clock to lose the difference between day and night. As a caregiver, that is NOT something that you want to happen when dealing with someone with dementia because caregivers need sleep too!
But how to get Mom to turn off her light like she used to? I have a couple of resources at hand when issues arise. I have an online coach from the Alzheimer’s Association and I also belong to the forum on Aging.com. In this case, I needed lots of different ideas from caregivers so I went to the forum. I put the issue out there and very quickly received several responses with lots of suggestions that have worked for the other caregivers.
My first thought was to remove Mom’s bedside lamp but she didn’t respond well to that! One caregiver suggested we replace the lamp’s bulb with a 15 watt bulb so that the light would be dim enough to eliminate the issue. That seemed like a good idea in that she wouldn’t be cussing at me for taking the lamp away!
Steve headed to Lowe’s and picked up a 7 ½ watt regular bulb – wow! We didn’t know they made them! He brought it home and put it in the lamp and I was able to put the lamp back on the bedside table and tell Mom she could keep it on all night. It gave a nice low glow so that she could see when she needed to go to the bathroom.
The next step was to get her back on the right schedule. Thankfully we had the new bulb in place on Christmas Eve. We went to the store and then off to one of our family outings where we kept her awake for a good five hours, right into the 9 pm hour. We took her home, gave her frozen yogurt and kept her up until 10:00.
On Christmas day we repeated the process but without the store. We celebrated Christmas with Mom’s family – mine too, of course – and kept her busy and happy there for a few hours. We finished the evening at Steve’s brother’s house and finally headed for home going on 8 pm. Frozen yogurt, a little TV and Mom was off to bed at 9:30.
So far so good! The next few days will tell.
All I can say is I’m sure glad we don’t live in Alaska where they average 4 to 6 hours of daylight this time of year and 18 to 24 hours during the summer. We’d have to put her in a room with artificial day and night!
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