Auntie sleeping a lot more in the day

[Gillsy01]

Hi, I'm the primary carer for my 77 year old auntie. She has recently been diagnosed with Early stage Alzheimer's and is taking 10mg Donezapil each day after her tea. She's been taking it for around 9 months now and has had no side effects at all. She's recently had another review with a nurse from the memory clinic, and while she is declining, she can still wash and dress herself and go shopping. My issue is, that she's falling asleep during the day all the time. You can be talking to her and she'll drop off. She fell asleep for 3 hours in a restaurant the other day with friends, she falls asleep on the bus and I'm worried things are progressing faster than I thought? She is struggling to remember the value of money, notes and coins etc, she's getting up at 5am then calling her friends to ask what time they're going out that day? She's very active and I've got her in a lovely flat in a sheltered scheme where she knows a lot of people and she has a better social life than me, but I don't know what to do this? Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing? Any tips or advice would be really appreciated, thanks. I'm arranging a doctors appointment tomorrow and will also be calling the nurse at the memory clinic but it's hard to know how to handle this

 

[nae sporran]

Hullo and welcome, @Gillsy01. Good luck with your appointment with the doctor tomorrow, I hope that gives you some answers to your aunt's problems. My partner is definitely sleeping more as her dementia progresses, but your aunt falling asleep in restaurants and waking at 5 in the morning is a different problem.
Others will be around with better advice from their experiences, but I found this and hope it gives you something to go on in the meantime. https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/symptoms-and-diagnosis/sleep

 

[Canadian Joanne]

My mother did go through a number of sleeping phases. I always have thought it was her way of escaping the disease. Trying to keep your aunt on a regular schedule will probably be quite difficult. Let's see what the doctor suggests.

 

[canary]

Im wondering whether the problem is that her body clock has reversed and she is awake much more during the night than you realise, resulting in her sleeping much more during the day.

 

[try again]

Not a helpful comment, I don't have dementia but tend to sleep a lot in these dark dull February days.