The last few days with Arthur have been interesting. Yesterday, he got up at 4 AM. That’s a normal time for me to get up, but Arthur rarely gets up before 8, and 10 or noon are just as common. 4 AM is unheard of.
Well after getting up at 4 AM, he suddenly decided it was bedtime, at around 4 PM. Which was weird, because I’d told him I’d be doing dinner in an hour or so. But his bedtime routine kicked in, he brushed his teeth, took off his clothes, and was in bed.
But then it got weirder. I was up, getting ready for my bedtime – which is around 8 PM, because I almost always get up between 4 and 5. And I heard Arthur up and around. I figured it was a bathroom run, but then I heard clonking of his shoes – they have a distinctive sound with how he shuffles his feet as he walks. I went downstairs – he was fully dressed. He said, “Good morning,” rather cheerfully. I pointed at the clock. “That’s 8 PM, not 8 AM,” I explained. He looked quite dismayed. And then he didn’t believe me. “I just slept all night.”
I finally proved to him that it was 8 PM (the perpetual gray, outside light in Southeast Alaskan summer doesn’t help – it really could be any time of day, any time). Then he said, “Well, that makes sense. I slept all day. I tried to explain that he’d gone to bed 4 hours earlier, at 4 PM. He wasn’t buying it. “I slept all day, I’m sure.”
It was all rather pointless. Don’t try to challenge the perceived reality of seniors with dementia. I know this, intellectually, but it can be very hard to practice in the day-to-day.
I got him some warmed up dinner from what I’d made earlier, that he’d missed by going to bed so early. And then, after about 2 hours, he did his full bedtime routine again, and was in bed by 10 PM. Great. I expected more weirdness today. Instead, he slept in to 12:30 in the afternoon. It’s completely random, basically. It’s like that guy living in a cave, in those experiments in the 70’s, where his days would get shorter or longer on strange schedules.
