How Bazaar!

Rick didn't sleep much last night. He went to bed at 9 pm and then woke up sometime in the night (I can’t remember the time) to go to the bathroom. I took him, and then went to the other bathroom to go myself. When I came back into the bedroom, he was still on the toilet. So I climbed back in bed to wait for him to get done. I guess I fell asleep and didn't hear him get up or come into the room. (I have done this plenty of times and hear him come into the room, get up and help him in bed and then go back to sleep.) I didn't wake up until the alarm went off this morning. He was up wandering around in the bedroom. At first I thought he had just gotten up. But then I realized that I didn't remember getting him back in bed again last night. He was walking around without his pajama bottoms or underwear on, just his tee shirt. He must have been up a long time last night.

I went looking for his pj's and finally found them on the porch outside my office. It is a little porch with no access to the yard. He had laid them down on the farthest part of the porch almost off it. Of course it had been raining so they were wet.

I got him dressed and decided to have him lay down while I got ready. He went to sleep and so I decided that I would keep him home from the center and let him sleep. But he woke up again shortly and so we ate breakfast and went on to the center. He will probably be sleepy today. I have let Lynn, the nurse at the center, know what transpired during the night.

Pool fun!

Saturday we went to the pool for the afternoon. Rick did so very good in the water. He walked down the steps into the water without hesitation and swam around enjoying himself. He actually swam under water a couple of times. I was so surprised.

But then I really messed up. I forgot to give him his medicine Saturday evening. So Sunday morning when he woke up he was not acting himself. His eyes were slits and he was jerking some. He had gone to the bathroom when I remembered that I had forgotten to give his medicine. So I went and got it right away and gave it to him. I gave him the 100 mg of Topamax that he should have gotten the night before, instead of the normal 75 mg he usually gets in the morning. Then I put him back in the bed. He was stiff and didn't move easily. He kept his knees pulled up. I was finally able to get him to lay them to the side still bent up. Then, in a little bit, he went to sleep and slept it off. We didn't make it to Sunday School yesterday because I let him sleep as long as he wanted to. When he woke up he was still a little resistant to my direction but he ate his breakfast fair and we went on to church. He was fine the rest of the day.

I get so mad at myself when I forget to give him his medicine. I'm much better at it than I used to be, but every now and then it still happens.

I was talking to the nurse, Lynn, at the center last week. She says Rick is so much better than he was. He doesn't sleep during the day at all. He is up walking around visiting with the others there. She can talk to him across the room and he responds. He comes to her office trying to tell her something. Lynn says he isn't a typical Alzheimer's patient. She suggested that I ask if there could be a misdiagnosis. Wondered if he should get a CT scan or MRI? I will ask.

Going down on med too faxt?

So Rick has been down to 75 mg Topamax since Friday. That’s Friday morning, Friday night, Saturday morning and Saturday night, and this morning (Sunday). We finally got home and settled down to watch some TV about 4 pm or 4:30 pm. Rick slept most of the time I was watching. About 5:30 pm, he started talking like sleep talking. He was calling the name of Jesus. He has done this before and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. I kept looking at him every little bit but didn’t get alarmed. Then about 5:45 pm I looked at him and his hand was stretched out and he was jerking a little bit. He was still talking and would even respond to me when I talked to him. But he didn’t open his eyes. He was a little stiff. It took about 30 minutes for him to get back to normal. I guess this was probably a petite mal seizure. He finally woke up enough for me to take him to the bathroom. But he didn’t do anything. I put him in the bed after taking off his clothes. He didn’t go to sleep. I sat on the bed beside him talking to him. He said some things that didn’t make much sense. He smiled at me and said my name. But I’m not sure if he was calling my Joyce or talking about me. I finally got him up to have supper and I gave him his pills. I gave him 100mg Topamax tonight. He finally got back to his normal self. Maybe I went down too fast. I will talk to the doctor tomorrow.

Changing med dosing again

060309

I am still wondering if Rick is getting too much Topomax.

He continues to be seeing things. He is agitated much of the time. Resistant to my direction. It is hard to get him to sit down on the toilet and then when I finally get him down he gets up without doing anything. Some times it takes 3 tries before he finally will urinate. I have had to sit down beside him and hold his hands still before he will calm down enough to use the bathroom.

These aren’t life threatening, but I know he is not enjoying feeling this way and I don’t enjoy having him this way. The few days after getting off the Dilantin and going up on the Topamax was his best time except for the seizures.

I am wondering if he has too much Topamax in his system now. I asked Valerie to talk to Dr Bell if going down to 75 mg bid would be a good thing to try?

Rick is sleeping well at night, but he wakes up with a start about once a night. He is ready to jump out of bed and does if I don’t catch him first. I can usually calm him down in a couple of minutes.

Most of the time he eats well, feeding himself. Occasionally I need to redirect him back to eating.

He is sleeping more during the day in the last few days. Saturday he slept much of the time while we were at the pool and then again when we got home. Sunday afternoon he slept all afternoon. We went to church that night again and then he slept when we got home again. There for awhile he stayed away most of the day.

I just feel that we jumped up to the 100mg bid of Topamax pretty fast because of the seizures, and he didn’t have a chance to try the 75 mg bid.

Valerie wasn’t able to get up with Dr Bell until Thursday, 060409. He is not opposed to trying Topamax at 75mg BID.

So we started taking 75mg bid on Friday, 060609.