Bedtime Routine for TV-Lover with MCI

Welcome to the forum. At some point you do have to take charge of the medications, and it sounds like the time is now. I take it your mother lives with you? My taking over her medications was a huge battle with my partner, but i was ultimately able to win that battle because I'm a doc and it was my bailiwick. Not everyone can pull that off though.

Two thoughts: you could even give her the trazodone with dinner. She might not even recognize it if you take charge of the bottles, just tell her it's a new vitamin the doc wants her to take.

The other thought is that sleep fragmentation and change in sleep patterns is pretty common with dementia, and there may be other drugs that work better than trazodone. My partner was put on the atypical antipsychotic Seroquel for this reason several years ago and it has worked like a charm; trazodone gave her both constipation and dry mouth.I'm. You need to know that the atypical antipsychotics carry a black box warning for vascular events in the elderly, but the overall risk is pretty low and they are widely used in dementia. You might discuss this with her doc, and again- the introduction of a new drug would give you an opportunity to give it to her in the early evening without having to tell her what it's for.

As for sleeping her days away, yes it may come to that. Apathy and loss of executive function are also common, and you don't have to try to constantly keep her engaged, that's going to be a losing battle in the long run. Hard to be the cruise director and the caregiver at the same time.

It might be worth seeing if the parental control functions include a timer. Never looked....

Don’t forget to give yourselves and your loved ones a GRACE TIMEOUT to stop the verbal tennis matches. My mom is 80 and has vascular dementia (early stage) I’m 61 but she thinks I’m still her little boy. I cope by pretending that I’m her and how wound I want someone to treat me if I had dementia. Finally, remember neither you or your loved one SIGNED up for DEMENTIA you’ve been thrust into a very difficult position. In life we will all be tested, it’s not the MAGNITUDE of the test it’s the MAGNITUDE of your faith that usually determines your outcome.

@H1235 That's an interesting idea. My cable box allows me to block channels, but not put the device to sleep as I can with my WiFi or individual devices. But a surge protector with an on/off switch would work as would an old school timer like people put in their lights when they go on vacation.

HB

We had a TV with a sleep timer on the remote. I joked (pre dementia) that it saved our marriage. My husband would constantly fall asleep with the TV on, but suddenly awake when I turned it off.

I know it goes against all rules of sleep hygiene, but is there a TV in the bedroom? Might help her fall asleep while watching.

Our cats and dogs have totally flipped our morning and bedtime routines, for the better. They get us up early and beg for their bedtime snacks until we give in, usually around 9pm. Can you manipulate something external to cue for bedtime? I love the idea of the tv shutting off automatically - blame the cable company or something beyond your control. There was another post from someone who is helping their LO stay awake during the day with lots of caffiene in the morning then something else to help them fall asleep in the evening. I swear my mother's AL did some of these things!