MIL is up every hour during the night to try to move her bowels or force "tingle". Any advice?

Hi Overit, you do not mentioned any dementia in profile but I’m taking the leap due to the mention of confusion on using the walker and the digging behavior. My Mom has dementia and has recently begun confusion with using her walker. If this is simply an obsession at this point with her toileting habits, I would try some anti anxiety / sleeping meds, alarm her bed to alert in case she tries to get up, and everyone might just get better sleep. Good luck.

If the doctors find no bowel or urinary issues with your mother, you may want to consider a mild anti-anxiety medication. When my mother suffered with dementia, she was obsessed with her bowels. She would often tell me that she “filled the bowl” when she had a movement. That would have been about 4 gallons of feces. She also called 911 three times when she had very minor accidents in bed at night, convinced she was very ill.

I would also suggest supervision to prevent “digging” as she could scratch herself and that could lead to infection.

She could be feeling a lot of bladder problems due to a urethritis which makes one feel like they have to go all the time. Her doctor can try one of several medications to help with this. You might want to bulk up the stools a bit with Citrucel so she can really FEEL the move on it, as stool softeners take that away, and make it often feel as tho it isn't emptying the bowel. That would however require adequate fluid intake, at least a glass with the capsule or powder. And you want to be careful with powder which can quickly thicken to a gel and cause choking. So a urologist is number one. He can give pills to help "that feeling" of urgency and frequency. And I would try to bulk up those stools a bit so she knows/feels she is going. This can become obsessive and habitual as you already know. Sometimes nothing works. Sadly.