Night-time wanderings

[jugglingeverything]

I believe my mum to have dementia although not had anything official confirmed yet. Over the last few months she has faded before my eyes. she has good days and bad days but the bad days are taking over. She has always struggled with physical disability but has remained independent and living in her own flat. She has an excellent team of carers that have coped well with all the physical stuff and she has a careline button for help.

Night-time is the real problem. Each night the carers use the hoist to put her to bed but sometime during the night she seems to develop superhuman powers and is up into her scooter and off around the flats. She wakes people in the middle of the night and invariably ends up on the floor with the paramedics coming to get her up or she just calls for the paramedics because she wants to get up. It can't continue. I've contacted the GP but am just not getting anywhere.

Is there anything I can do to try to address the night-time wanderings? I'm so worried she will have to go into a home and she will hate that. I am woken every night by calls from careline and if I go to see her I have a queue of people complaining. I am worried she will end up breaking her hip in a fall or getting lost and confused somewhere. I just don't know what to do?

[CMOTDibbler]

That must be really hard.

Could the carers try removing the key from the scooter last thing? It won't stop her getting up, but will stop her getting further.

Or you could try a motion detector message thing - it could say 'its nighttime, go back to bed' for instance.

My mum generally sleeps well, but dad hides the scooter keys at night, and fortunately she can't walk well enough to get out. My great aunt on the other hand used to head into town at night and the local yobs would look after her and call the police to run her home.

[jugglingeverything]

thank-you, that is really touching about your g. aunt :)

The carers leave the scooter well away from the bed but she confessed to the doctor the other night that she just throws herself from the bed to the floor when she wants to move!

This week I've had her banging on people's doors convinced there is something she needs to do but can't remember what so now I've got her neighbours in tears. I called the emergency GP out so he could see what she's like but it takes them 3hrs to come and by then she was calm again so he said there was nothing to do and normal GP needed to sort things. Still no joy there though. I don't understand why it takes so long to get people to act. Its like she's got to break her hip or something first :(