Coping with phone calls through the night

[LiteralNightmare]

If I don't answer it's worse because they'll come looking for me and wake everyone else up too.

I'm so tired, I'm not thinking straight. I've had three phone calls since midnight and 4am and it feels pointless bothering to try to get more sleep. The phone calls are about her bank accounts or hunger. I've left a basket of snacks available which has helped but the constant checking of bank accounts is driving me insane. She can no longer figure out her online banking. If I say I'll check in the morning she says ok, then rings me again in half an hour.

The GP gave her quetiapine (which worked brilliantly) but she won't take it now. I can't put it in with her regular meds because it's a half tablet and she spots it.

Even if she was in a care home it wouldn't stop the phone calls. I wish I could give someone else, just for about 5 hours, then I could cope.

I don't know why I'm writing, no one can help, I know! Cathartic I guess. I do actually feel a bit better now. Good luck, fellow travelers. ✊

Quite. My DF left his phone in his pocket and was incontinent. Once the had two phone washed in 90 degrees we thought maybe not give him another. He couldn’t dial us by them, but he did phone us via the home in more normal hours.

then can the calls in the night from the night staff if he’d fallen over - or needed to tell us something before they changed shift at 7am. But it was still better

You should start looking at care options including managing her medications - even if it’s someone who comes at night and administers her medication and then checks on her in the morning.

Thank you all so much. It's massively helpful.

She is diagnosed with dementia, and her lovely GP has prescribed a low dose of quetiapine to help her settle at night but she won't take it. GP advised me to crush it and put in her food, but this doesn't always work as no guarantee she'll eat at the right time.

I'm in Ireland. Mum lives with me. There are no care home spaces. I'm also a carer for my adult daughter and need to be reasonably alert during the day. I feel like I'm going to snap in half.

what will social services say if you say to them that you REFUSE to cope with her any longer? You don't have to mean it so long as they believe you.

I'm sorry for your situation OP, it must be incredibly hard.

You say the doctor said to crush the tablet and give it in food. In case you have not tried this already, give a 'medicated appetiser', crush the tablet into a small amount (a mouthful or two) of food she likes and is almost guaranteed to eat. However quetiapine has a bitter taste which would be difficult to disguise, so you may not succeed. You need more help from the GP.

Yes they would. If she was in a care home with dementia they wouldn’t allow her to constantly make phone calls at night

Absolutely. My mum is in a dementia home and there’s no way she could ring me at night

Block individually apart from your mum. Harsh but they can’t all rely on you!

Thanks again all. She requested strong cheese on toast, so I thought perfect, we're sorted for the night! Half an hour later and she doesn't want it. I might eat the bloody toast myself and sleep through the night. (Joking) (and crying)

I'll ring her GP in the morning. Even see if a few nights respite may be possible.

I really mean it, thank you all so much.

God, this sounds like my mother already.

My mum did this to me from her care home when she had my number, and you have my sympathy. Blocking and DND didn't help as she just went to voicemail (even with blocking) and filled it completely with screaming crying voicemails within two hours (she had permanent delirium as well as dementia and was constantly hallucinating), meaning I was a complete wreck and also couldn't get any work messages.

In the end I got a new number which I did not give her, and she had to ask the staff to call me, which solved the problem as whilst they won't take a phone away they were also not prepared to come and call me for her every two minutes for three hours. I realise this isn't necessarily an option for you if they live in their own home but would also have considered setting an outgoing message to the effect that I was having technical difficulties with voicemail and to email or WhatsApp me, which she would not have been able to do.

Huge sympathies, OP, it's so hard.

I think you have to be firm on the care home front unfortunately. There's always no room or no money or no whatever until you force yourself to the top of their list. What you don't want to do is leave it until you've already snapped. My grandma did that, she hid everything from us until eventually my grandad became actively very dangerous and we had to try and sort things out in no time at all and it was a nightmare.

What dose has the doctor prescribed? Is it 12.5mg? Because unless it is, get them to switch it over to 25mg tablets - even if she has to take two that would be better. Or see if she could have the upped to 25mg? Or switched over to zopiclone or something?

I'm thinking about how you get toddlers/pets to take meds here so how about crush the tablet and stir it into a yoghurt or porridge or something?

This is interesting. My mum is in an award winning home for dementia sufferers, and rightly so. It is brilliant and well run. Everyone is happy and thriving. But they do take some items away from residents. And I don't think any of them has a mobile phone.

No advice but we are currently going through this with my FIL. We can get anything from 20-100+ calls a day. It can be anything from what do I do today about 40 times to..I don’t have any money (which is in his pocket but he did check). We have tried boards around the house, messages on the voicemail even getting me to answer instead of my husband (it’s only us with 2 young kids)

It‘s exhausting and so so hard!

But if the person was in a home the OP wouldn’t need to answer calls in the middle of the night as she’d know her DM was safe.
In the dementia care home where my stepfather was, none of the residents had phones - they likely would have lost them, broken them or not known what to do with them. I think once someone with dementia needs to go into a care home, they’d really struggle to use any kind of technology. I remember we took SFs iPad in not long after he moved there but he didn’t have a clue what it was or how to use it - only a few months earlier it was never out of his hand and in constant use.

<sigh> just here to offer my sympathies op, my mum calls at all hours to ask what the time is , I tell her to look at the massive, glow in the dark clock she has and then she informs me it's 3am .

Mum had a phone when in her nursing home. It was one of the Doro 4 button phones. I'd block her number at night and switch off my voicemail. I'd do the same when I was at work.

Dad couldn't use a phone by the time he reached the nursing home stage

Both had dementia

If there is a medication which helps a dementia patient sleep, I think it's essential they take the tablet. I would have lied and lied to get them to take the medication

Also, in the past, I got the Doc involved as both Mum and Dad did what the Doc said

I am so sorry. If she was in a care home, she won’t have access to her mobile at night. Take the phone away.

Could you cut all of her pills in half, so she can’t spot the half one? You can still give her the full dose of all her other meds, just chopped in half.

@LiteralNightmare
I don't know how the care systrem works in Ireland, but I am sure that in some ways it is similar to England - in that, as long as you are prepared to carry on doing all the caring, the authorities are more than happy to let you. You really have to insist that you are no longer able or willing to cope before they take any action to get the help you need. And of course you are so broken down and tired it is hard to do that. But please try, you can't carry on like this.

There will come a crisis time when your mum poses a real and significant danger to herself - possibly you and your daughter if you all live together. Then she will need to go in a care home urgently. Start looking now, ensure you have both LPOAs now.
And cheese, especially strong cheese, late at night will interfere with her sleep anyway. Something in it causes stressful dreaming.

Not necessarily. If it was the home my DA was in they’d just say they couldn’t manage their needs and refuse to keep them there.

I agree. I owned the house my mum was living in and I just had to tell them that I wouldn't allow her access (she was in hospital, bed bound, literally raving and screaming, with a grade 4 pressure wound and double incontinence, and they wanted to send her home to a house on her own with four care visits a day and no one at night).

It absolutely stank and of course that's why they push you to that point, because so many people just will not feel able to say they won't give their parent a home. The hospital social worker asked if I was really saying the family wouldn't "step up" to keep her in her home and I just said that I wasn't going to be guilt-tripped into pretending that she could be properly cared for outside of a nursing home when she obviously couldn't be. She ended up in a nursing home (the only one that was prepared to take her because she was so complex and they were AMAZING, and this was the woman they wanted to send home to live alone!) funded by CHC. So you really have to just refuse to be gaslit or guilt-tripped, sadly.