Night time wandering

Des468

Hello, this is my first post. My mother in law has Dementia (Vascular/Alzheimers) and live with us. She has recently started getting up at 1am-3am wandering around the house, staring at the doors/walking through rooms/staring at open refridgerator/making coffee- etc.... My husband and I have set up Blink, Ring, to monitor this nighttime activity as it progresses. She is on Namenda and just started Aricept- we have been giving melatonin or Benadryl at night to help her sleep better. Melatonin is only working slightly, (she only wakes for an hour) vs Benadryl usually helps her sleep throughout the night. She has never gotten "drowsy" on benadryl (unlike me my tongue will be on the desk if I take this during the day for allergies-or if taken at night I get brain fog the next day...) Her primary doctor scolded us and warned that "that's on the no no list for elderly because of risk for falls" so we refrained from giving it most nights, then last week at her neurologist-we were informed that Its ok to give, she also offered Seraquel if this issue gets worse or if benadryl doesn't work well enough....I am an RN and know the side effects of this medication (its a sedative/antipsychotic) and works great with our agitated geri-psych patients in the hospital but not really ready to give this to mom just yet. We will soon be getting our installed alarm system activated to notify us of doors being opened at night and are anticipating that this night time wandering will continue to increase as her disease progresses....Any suggestions?

M1

I understand your reluctance but I'd go with the Seroquel.  We started my partner on it for severe sleep fragmentation (part of the disease) sometime in early 2021 and it has worked great.  Started very small (12.5 mg), now for various reasons she remains on a single daily dose 50 mg at bedtime and it still works great, no side effects.

LaurenB

We have the door chimes installed and it's great for hearing if someone is coming or going on the exterior doors.  We also added a mattress alarm so that we know when she has stood up.  It has a small pager that we take with us into the living room and her husband will keep it next to his side of the bed.  Thankfully it has different volumes so that when it beeps it doesn't have to scare the crap out of you, but rather just alert us.  You're right to be concerned about her wandering especially if she's using appliances.

Des468

Thank you for your input, MD did say it would be a very small dose to start with- I will keep this in mind…..

Des468

Thank you for your input! I love the light bed alarm idea!