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rolltide Asked March 2018

My 93 yr old grandmother with dementia won't sleep at night after not sleeping all day! Any advice?

My grandmother takes Depakene at breakfast (10 ml) and dinner (10 ml) to help calm her during the day. She also takes 10 mg of Ambien before bedtime. She is under hospice care now and they want to take away the Ambien and give her Haldol 3x a day with the Depakene. We tried it for a week and it seemed to make my grandmother worse. She still is able to walk around and be active. The problem at night is she usually takes the Ambien around 8:30pm and by 1am she is up needing to go to the bathroom and then it is usually a struggle for the rest of the night to try and get her back to sleep. She keeps throwing off her covers and thinking she has to go to the bathroom or just saying she needs to get up. Her bathroom issues have gotten worse too. She pulls her pants down wherever she is and tries to go to the bathroom! My family and I don't want her on the Haldol yet and stopped giving it to her. It made her talk even crazier and seem zombie like at times. The hospice nurse says that the Haldol is really the only thing that might help (since she's getting the Depakene too) if we just will continue to give it to her. I feel like it will make her get in the hospice bed sooner and she isn't ready for that at all! Does anyone have any advice? We are getting desperate. I don't see how she can stay up pretty much all day and not get much sleep at night. I'm afraid she is going to end up having a heart attack!!!

freqflyer Mar 2018
Rolltide, I am moving your post closer to the beginning of the forum list. Hopefully a caregiver who has experience with this type of issue can offer you suggestions.

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