activity – My Alzheimer's Story

Note: this post has been shared thousands of times since I first published it. Also, Dr. John Morley, director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University, one of the United States foremost authorities on geriatrics, and former editor of the Journal of America Medical Directors Association called the piece a “wonderful insight, which should be required reading for all persons who have to work with persons with Alzheimer’s disease.”

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Imagine this:

It’s a bitterly cold winter night. You have recently been drafted into the role of caring for your father who has dementia. You are in his house in the country, miles from the nearest town. He is a BIG man. A strong man who has farmed the land he lives on for decades. He believes he’s somewhere else. In a strange hotel with strange people. And you are one of them.

Despite the fact that he thinks he doesn’t know you, he wants you to take him home. You argue for several hours. In the end, he begins to get physically aggressive. He tries to break a window when you block him from getting out the door. Years later you learn the situation could have been avoided. His aggression wasn’t his fault. It was yours.

I have learned through personal experience, reading and research that people living with dementia (PLWD) behave in logical, natural and understandable ways to stressful situations – just like most of the rest of us do. They react as any “normal” person would, but their behaviour is attributed to the disease rather than to whatever catalyst actually sparked it.

Many people with dementia are needlessly medicated for aggressive behaviour provoked by the environment and the people around them. Care partners need to find ways to hang up their boxing gloves instead of getting into the ring with people who live with dementia. Other dementia care pioneers share my belief that we can and should reduce, if not eliminate, the antipsychotic medication that is currently given to people with dementia to treat aggressive behaviour. It sedates PWD into compliance. I agree with dementia care experts such as Teepa Snow, Naomi Feil, Dr. Allen Power, Judy Berry, Eilon Caspi, and a growing wave of others who say that to provide compassionate care to PWD we need to see the world through their eyes.

20 questions

Here are 20 questions to ask yourself to help you understand why someone with dementia might get angry or aggressive:

What would you do if you had to walk a mile in their shoes?
How would you react if your children took your car keys away for no reason and told you couldn’t drive anymore?
How would you react if people told you it was daytime when you knew for a fact it was the middle of the night?
How would you respond if someone told you strangers would be coming to your house where you had lived alone for decades to take care of you because you couldn’t take care of yourself?
What would you say if someone came and took your dog or cat away?
How would you react if somebody kidnapped you from your home and took you to a prison full of sick and crazy people?
What would you do if the people in the prison ordered you to sit down when you wanted to stand up? Or made you stand up when you wanted to sit down?
How would you react if you wanted a drink and were told you couldn’t have one?
How would you respond if you loved peace and quiet and you were surrounded by loud noises, and strangers who shouted, groaned and talked nonsense all the time?
How would you react if people less than a quarter your age talked to you like you were a two-year old?
What would you do if you wanted to escape, but all the doors were locked and you didn’t have a key? What would you do if you weren’t allowed out – ever?
How would you react if somebody tried to force-feed you? What would you do if somebody made you swallow pills you knew would put you to sleep when you wanted to be awake?
What would you do if a stranger tried to take something that belonged to you? What if they managed to get it and they wouldn’t give it back?
How would you respond if someone told you weren’t allowed to go into your own room? Or open a door? Or close a drawer? Or pick something up? Or put something down? Or go outside? Or go inside? Or do whatever you wanted?
What would you do if you were trapped, and you cried for help, and someone put you in a chair you couldn’t get out of and said you had to stay there?
What if a stranger wanted to come to the bathroom with you? What if he tried to undress you? What if he put his hand between your legs and under your arms and under your breasts?
What if you said you didn’t want to have a bath but people took your clothes off anyway and then they forced you into the bath and told you to calm down and be quiet?
What if things like this happened every day? How would you feel?
How would you express your feelings if you couldn’t find the words? What if you did find the words and no one listened?
What would you do if you were alone and powerless? How would you react if you had no control over your own life? What if you felt incompetent, invisible and inconsequential?

What would you do?

Based on my own experience, research and training with Teepa Snow, I developed a process called “BANGS” to help myself and others avert “shoot outs” with people who live with dementia. It’s easy and it works. You can learn the steps and use it too.

Watch my free one-hour webinar on BANGS here, or see it in individual chunks at these links:

“B” is for breathe.

“A” is for assess, accept, and agree.

“N” is for never, never argue

“G” is for go with their flow, let go of your ego, get over it, get on with it, get down to it

“S” if for say you’re sorry

Download a PDF here: 20 Questions that Help Explain Dementia Aggression

https://myalzheimersstory.com/2016/12/08/5-surefire-ways-to-stop-anger-and-aggression-in-people-who-live-with-alzheimers-disease-in-the-mid-and-later-stages/

Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Care Partnering, Joy, Music, Videos

mom knew hundreds of songs, but down in the valley was her go to

October 2, 2020October 2, 2020 amazingsusan

I had never heard Mom sing Down in the Valley. Ever. Until a couple of years after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease. Then she (we) sang it every day, sometimes five or six times a day, until just before she died.

Mom and I must have sung Down in the Valley thousands of times between 2011, when I moved back to Canada to be her care partner, and 2016, when she said goodbye to this world. During that time I learned so much from our musical sessions together.

“Why don’t we sing a song Mom?” I would say when things were getting a bit out of hand, when either she or I was feeling stressed or angry or sad, or when I had run out of other things to do to keep us both occupied.

“Okay,” she would respond.

“What do want to sing Mom?” I always asked before I made any suggestions of my own. It gave her a modicum of control as her world was spinning out of it.

“How about Down in the Valley?” She would almost always reply — It was her go to.

“Okay Mom. You start.”

“Down in the valley, valley so low,” the words came out of her mouth sweet and true. “Hang your head over, hear the wind blow. Roses love sunshine, violets live dew, angels in heaven, know I love you.”

Mom had a beautiful voice. She knew all the words. I fell short on both counts, at least at the beginning. I learned the words eventually–to Down in the Valley and dozens of other tunes– but my voice would never match hers. Ever.

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down in the valley: one of our gazillion favourites

5 things I never knew until I sang with my alzheimer mom

Challenges & Solutions, Resources, Toward better care

20 questions to ask yourself when someone who lives with dementia wants to “go home” or tries to escape wherever they are

February 16, 2020January 23, 2024 amazingsusan

Wanting to “go home” is a desire often expressed by people who live with Alzheimer disease and/or other types of dementia, even when they are in their own homes. Not being able to fulfill a loved one’s desire “go home” can be incredibly frustrating for care partners who would certainly take their family member living with dementia “home” if only they could.

In the early days of being a care partner to my mom, I didn’t know what to do when she said “I want to go home.” She would have her little bag packed with random stuff, and be ready to go out the door.

“But Mom, we are home,” I would say. “Look, Mom, this is your furniture, these are your carpets, those are your pictures on the wall. We are home!”

When she wasn’t convinced, the conversation would get more heated as we stood arguing in the kitchen, den, or living room of her big red brick house on the hill, until I sometimes heard myself yelling at her in exasperation “Where is home then, if it’s not here?”

I soon learned that arguing with her didn’t work. It was a waste of time and energy. It left both of us emotionally drained, and no further ahead. Eventually, I found different solutions to “I want to go home,” as well as other challenges. One solutions was to put myself in her shoes, to see her reality rather than my own.

What I discovered through self-reflection, observation and my own research is the behaviour we find challenging in people who live with dementia is behaviour we would likely exhibit ourselves in similar circumstances.

20 questions to ask yourself when someone who lives with dementia wants to “go home” or tries to escape wherever they are

When you find yourself in an environment that makes you anxious or uncomfortable, what do you do?
How would you feel if you were kidnapped? What would you do?
If you found yourself in a place that that was too hot, too cold, or too noisy, what would you do?
If were taken from your home by people you didn’t know, and put in a strange place full of crazy people, what would you do?
Where do you want to go or be when you feel tired, overwrought, out of sorts, out of place, lonely, scared or overwhelmed by everything?
How important is it to your well-being to feel like you belong somewhere? Where do you feel your greatest sense of belonging?
How long can you stay in one place without wanting to go somewhere else? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?
If someone locked you in your house and told you that you could never leave, how would you feel?
As a child, did you ever fall and hurt yourself while playing outside? Where did your instinct tell you to go for safety and security?
Have you ever run away from a problem, a place or a situation? When? Why?
Do you ever feel like you just have to leave when things get too much for you to bear?
Do you sometimes just want everything to be other than the way it is?
Do you take holidays and vacations away from home? How does it feel to be away? How does it feel to be away when everything seems to go wrong?
How do you feel when you return home after a holiday, vacation or long visit with friends or family?
In general, where do you prefer to be most of the time: in your own home or someone else’s home?
In general where do you feel most comfortable and in control: in your own home or someone else’s?
What feelings does the word “home” evoke for you?
Given the choice, when you feel tired or sick, would you rather be at home or somewhere else?
Do you sometimes long to be somewhere other than where you are?
When do you most appreciate being “at home” wherever that is or whatever it means to you?

It’s no wonder people living with dementia want to go home…

13 expert tips to help with “I want to go home.”

“wandering” is not a symptom of dementia

Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Copyright: kalbi / 123RF Stock Photo

Care Partnering, Resources, Toward better care

20 questions to ask when someone living with dementia “resists” or “refuses” care

March 25, 2019January 23, 2024 amazingsusan

When you think about it, it’s not rocket science, or at least it’s not if you haven’t bought into the biomedical model that labels normal behaviour as aberrant because people have a diagnosis of Alzheimer or a related dementia.

I hope these questions will get you thinking about how “resisting” and “refusing” care might be understood and treated differently. I also hope it will prompt solutions other than a prescription pad and antipsychotic drugs.

20 questions to ask when someone living with dementia “resists” or “refuses” care

Is the person able to do this herself? Would she prefer to do it herself?
Is the care necessary? Could it be deferred or stopped altogether?
If a stranger were doing to me what I’m doing to her, how would I feel? What would I do? How would I react?
Have I asked his permission to do what I’m doing?
Is it the right time for this? Would another time be better?
Am I the right person to be providing this kind of care to her? Would someone else be better equipped?
Have I been properly trained in this kind of care?
How did I approach her? What was her initial reaction? Did I change my approach based on her reaction? Am I going with her flow?
Did I start with and continue to use Hand Under Hand?
What was going on with him in the previous hour or two? What was he doing? Could whatever it was have caused him to feel upset or uncomfortable?
Is this the right environment to be providing this kind of care? Is more privacy needed? Is it too noisy?
Do I normally have a good relationship with her? Does she like me? Do I like her?
Am I treating him with respect? Am I treating him like a child, or a patient rather than like a person?
Am I taking steps to preserve her dignity? Am I being compassionate and understanding? Have I put myself in her shoes?
If I were on the receiving this kind of care, how would I feel? What would I do? How would I react?
How do I feel about providing this kind of care to him? Am I comfortable? Embarrassed? Matter of fact? Clinical? Angry? Disgusted?
Might I have hurt him in any way? Physically or emotionally? Could he be in pain? Is the care process painful?
Is she hot, cold, hungry or physically uncomfortable in some way?
What tone of voice am I using? What kinds of words am I using? If someone were to speak to me like I’m speaking to him, how would I feel? How might I react? What would I do?
Do I have enough time to provide this care properly? Am I hurried and rushed? If I am hurried and rushed, might this be causing her to feel anxious or uncomfortable?

More posts in the “20 questions”series.

20 questions to ask yourself about “wandering”

20 questions that help explain why people with dementia get agitated and physically aggressive

20 questions to ask yourself about dementia-related incontinence

Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Care Partnering, Challenges & Solutions, Toward better care

30 reasons people living with dementia might decline to eat

March 4, 2019January 24, 2024 amazingsusan

Some people say there are no stupid questions. I beg to differ. I regularly see stupid questions, or perhaps ignorant questions would be more accurate, being asked about people who live with dementia.

Often the questions come into my inbox from Quora. I answer the occasional one, like this query from a grandson for example. Most I ignore because the answers may be easily found with a quick google search.

Then there are the questions such as this that make me hot under the collar: “What does it mean when a person with dementia refuses food?” To which I couldn’t help but answer pointedly: “Oh for heaven’s sake. People with dementia are PEOPLE. Their behaviour is NORMAL. Ask yourself why you might refuse food, and you will have the answer to your question.”

I went on to give a list of thirty potential reasons someone living with dementia (or someone NOT living with dementia for that matter) might decline to eat:

He is not hungry
She doesn’t care for the food she’s being offered
He doesn’t like the way the food is presented (e.g. the colour, the texture, the fact that it’s pureed, or not, or it doesn’t even LOOK like food)
She doesn’t like the smell of the food
He doesn’t like the taste of the food / the food tastes bad.
The food is too hot or too cold
She is sick
She is tired and doesn’t feel like eating
He is in pain
Her tummy is upset, she has cramps
She’s having trouble swallowing and she’s afraid she might choke
He’s so sedated with drugs that he’s not interesting in eating or he physically can’t eat
She doesn’t remember how to use the utensils, and she doesn’t want to be impolite and use her hands
It’s not his usual mealtime; it’s too early or too late
Someone is telling her / giving her an order to eat and she hates people telling her what to do
Someone is trying to feed him, when he is perfectly capable of feeding himself
She needs help to eat, but she’s too afraid to ask or there’s no around to help her
It’s too noisy / it’s too quiet
She’s tired of eating the same thing all the time
The place he’s in is unfamiliar; he prefers to eat where he usually eats
She prefers to eat what she wants, and no one asked her what she wanted
The lights are too bright / the lights are too dim.
He feels constipated / she needs to go to the bathroom
She is surrounded by strange people and she wants to go home and eat with her family
She wants to sit with her friend at another table, but she’s not “allowed”
His dentures don’t fit properly and it’s hard for him to chew
She doesn’t seem to have her dentures anymore, and she can’t eat properly without them
Whenever he eats, he gets some kind of adverse reaction, so he’s refusing to eat to avoid the reaction
She saw someone crush pills into her food, and she doesn’t want to take the pills
He’s at the end of life, and I doesn’t feel like eating anymore

No doubt there are other reasons I haven’t thought of. The important thing is to remember that people who live with dementia are just like the rest of us. They are human beings with thoughts, feelings, needs, likes and dislikes.

If we took the time to ask ourselves smart questions about why people who live with dementia behave as they do, we wouldn’t need to ask stupid and ignorant ones!

And BTW, all of this is yet ANOTHER reason we need to #BanBPSD.

More posts and PDFs in the “20 questions”series.

101 potential causes of behaviour by people living with dementia that institutional care staff may find challenging

20 questions to ask when a care partner or resident walks around at night

“wandering” is not a symptom of dementia

Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Care Partnering, Challenges & Solutions, Toward better care

10 reasons people living with dementia get up in the night, and what often happens when they do

November 13, 2018January 24, 2024 amazingsusan

Contrary to what many people believe, people who live with dementia behave, for the most part, in the same way the rest of us do. Their behaviour is – again, for the most part – NOT the result of their dementia or whatever disease (e.g. Alzheimer) caused it. Rather, like all behaviour, it is driven by human emotions, perceptions and physical conditions, which means that the reasons people living with dementia get up in the night are the same reasons the rest of us do.

For example, they may:

1) Feel afraid

I remember being terrified during thunderstorms when I was a kid. I would cross the hall to my parents bedroom and ask if I might crawl in with them. My mother never said no; she always lifted the covers to let me in, and then cuddled close to comfort me. When Mom felt afraid and wanted to crawl into bed with me, I also never said no.

2) Be lonely

Who among has not at some point in her or his life felt alone, lonely and disconnected – especially at night, and/or when experiencing loss. When we feel lonely, it’s natural to search out others…isn’t it?

3) Need to use to the toilet

For the last forty years or so, I’ve gotten up to have a pee on average once a night, sometimes more. Luckily, because I don’t yet have dementia, no one has drugged me for doing so. But, unless things change, if and when I get Alzheiemer disease and am locked up in a Dementia Jail, I’ll be sedated for the thing that I will have done for half a century by then because it’ll be labeled as “wandering.” How do I know? Because that’s what happened to my mom. She got up in the night to use the toilet, and as a result was drugged into a catatonic state for the next four years.

4) Feel restless / not be able to sleep

I’ve suffered from insomnia since I was a teen at which time I was prescribed Valium by my family doctor. Valium. At age 15. Drug culture then; drug culture now. The Valium didn’t stop my insomnia – I still endure it two or three times a week. When I do, I just get up. One day, if and when I have dementia of some kind, I may be labeled a “wanderer.” Maybe you will be too, unless we change the broken system.

5) Not know where they are / think they are in a strange place

Have you ever woken up while staying in a hotel or at a friend’s place, and been momentarily disoriented? You ask yourself where you are because the surroundings don’t look familiar. When this happens to me, I usually remember fairly quickly that I’m travelling and not in my own home. But during the time between waking up, and becoming re-oriented I feel confused and kind of scared. I imagine this is what it must be like for someone living with dementia, except the reorientation part may take much longer (i.e. minutes, or sometimes even hours, or days). Listen to what it might sound like when this happens, and what not to do when it does!

6) Be physically uncomfortable (i.e. hungry, thirsty, hot, cold)

Do you sometimes get up in the night for a snack? Or an extra blanket because you feel cold? Or to open the window because you’re too hot? Besides trudging to the WC at least once a night, I also get up almost every night and have a glass of soy milk and a piece of chocolate – sometimes in a sleep-walking-kind-of-slumber!

7) Have a bad dream

Ever wake up with a start in a cold or hot sweat because you’ve been dreaming something dreadful? And the dream is so vivid that you are unsure if it was dream or reality? I bet the same happens to people who live with dementia. Maybe even more often than it happens to the rest of us, particularly to those living with dementia with Lewy Bodies.

8) Have heard an unusual sound or noise

One night a few years ago shortly after I moved into a new house, I heard a big crash. I was scared to death. I didn’t get up to investigate. I hid under the covers instead. But that’s me. Some people would get up to check it out. When I got up in the morning, I found that a big mirror had fallen off the wall and onto the living room floor. Miraculously it hadn’t broken.

9) Be a “night owl” or have worked the night shift

Some people work at night all their lives. For others, being a night owl is their way of being in the world. Sleep all day, stay awake all night. And then oops! We want them to fit with our schedule. No wonder they get angry and upset.

10) Think it’s daytime, not night

So this is the one that’s out of the ordinary. It’s tough to imagine how someone might think it’s the middle of the day when in it’s the middle of the night and vice versa. Nevertheless, try to conjure up what that might be like, or read this real-life nighttime conversation between Mom and I.

Most of us respond in a normal way when we find ourselves in certain sets of circumstances. Most of us wake up in the night from time to time, or even frequently. When we do, we may get up – it’s normal to do so.

But what happens when people who live with dementia get up in the night for any of these reasons above? Their behaviour is labeled aberrant, partly because once they are up, they forget the reason why they are up, and they become lost and/or confused because of their dementia.

Is this stressful for family members who are care partners? Yes, of course. Do they get frustrated and exhausted as a result? Yes, they often do. I know, because I’ve travelled that road. Is it inconvenient and challenging for care workers in institutions when residents walk around at night? Yes, it is. But the onus is on us to find compassionate solutions to address these issues, and not to blame the behaviour we find challenging or inconvenient on those who are living with dementia, and who are behaving just as the rest of us would under similar circumstances.

And all of this is yet ANOTHER reason we need to #BanBPSD.

More posts and PDFs in the “20 questions”series.

https://myalzheimersstory.com/2018/02/02/20-questions-to-ask-when-a-care-partner-or-resident-walks-around-at-night/

https://myalzheimersstory.com/2017/05/02/wandering-is-not-a-symptom-of-dementia/

Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Hope, Joy, Love, Music

mom’s 2012 irish medley

March 15, 2018March 16, 2024 amazingsusan

The Georgeville Neighbours’ Lunch was held (probably still is) the third Thursday of every month starting in late fall and running through to early spring. Mom usually went with her long-time friend Margery, who picked Mom up on her way to the event. Margery was a good friend to Mom. Good friends often become fewer and farther between for people who live with dementia.

When our angel Caroline joined Mom and I, she and Mom went to the Neighbours’ Lunches together. Sometimes I tagged along. The March 2012 lunch was on the 15th, two days before St. Patrick’s Day. Caroline helped Mom get “dolled up” in her best festive green gear, and before they left for the lunch Mom treated us to an impromptu concert in the living room. She didn’t remember all the words to the tunes, but that didn’t matter. It was such a joyful time. Mom sang beautifully and hammed it up, Caroline laughed so hard her cheeks hurt, and I captured what I could on my iPhone. (I’m so grateful for technology.)

By March 2012, Mom had lost her driver’s licence (the spring before), and she needed someone (either Caroline or I) to be with her all the time. She hadn’t been able to cook for herself, with the exception of making toast and tea, for more than a year. Nevertheless, she was still fully engaged with life and the people around her. In the video, you’ll see a puzzle on the table in the background, it’s a big-pieces jigsaw puzzle of Canada. We must have completed that puzzle 25 times during our last year together in her own home. Even Pia, Mom’s long-haired grey cat, got in the act.

I wish I could sing like Mom did. She knew hundreds of songs, a few of which I learned from her during her last years. She and I sang up until a couple of days before she died. Music saved our sanity; it also brought us both happiness and healing. I hope you enjoy this Irish medley as much now as we did in 2012. And oh yeah, Happy St. Patrick’s Day 🙂

Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Care Partnering, Family, Inspiration, Life & Living, Videos

grandpa drake the dragon teaches kids about dementia

March 11, 2018March 11, 2018 amazingsusan

Some people use the stuff that life hands them to create magic and beauty, while others see only despair and tragedy. Dr. Jennifer Bute is one of the magicians.

When she was diagnosed with early onset dementia, Dr. Bute began using her experience as a carer, a medical professional, and a patient to help people understand more about dementia. She produced a series of helpful videos as well as other resources that explain various aspects of dementia; you can access them on her blog (called “Glorious Opportunity”) here.

This video cartoon, developed in collaboration with Bute’s family, is narrated by her daughter Allison; it’s perfect for starting a conversation about dementia with young children:

The Dragon Story – Full HD from Kreativity on Vimeo.

Download the resources and discussion PDF that goes with the video here.

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Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Advocacy, Real life, Toward better care, You said it!

kate swaffer says: use a human-rights-based approach

February 13, 2018February 14, 2018 amazingsusan

“You said it!” is a place to discover informed comments, inspiring thoughts, short stories, good ideas, provocative opinions, quotable quotes and noteworthy snippets from across my worldwide network.

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Australia: Dementia care activist Kate Swaffer is known worldwide for her advocacy on behalf of people who live with dementia. She is a founding member of Dementia Alliance International, a speaker, and an author, as well as a wife and mother. She blogs here. The Straits Times article that goes with this video is here.

More Kate on MAS:

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Take my short survey on behaviour here.

Care Partnering, Resources, Toward better care

20 questions to ask when a care partner or resident walks around at night

February 2, 2018January 23, 2024 amazingsusan

My first few months as the full-time care partner to my mom while she was still living in her own home were difficult, mostly because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I learned as I went, but it was a slow process, and some knowledge came too late to be of much use to us. But it may be of use to you.

When I became tired because Mom was up and ”wandering” in the night, I turned to her family physician and then to her geriatrician for help. Both of them prescribed antipsychotics (Risperdal and Seroquel respectively), about which I knew little at the time. Neither doctor could offer any other suggestions or options, even though I specifically asked for non-drug alternatives as I knew Mom didn’t like taking medication.

I’m certain things would have gone differently if I’d had a better understanding of the reasons Mom got up in the night. When you think about it, it’s not rocket science, or at least it’s not if you haven’t bought into the biomedical model that labels normal behaviour as aberrant because people have a diagnosis of Alzheimer or a related dementia.

I hope these questions will get you and others thinking about how this particular “behaviour” might be understood and treated differently. I also hope it will prompt solutions other than a prescription pad.

20 questions to ask when people living with dementia walk around at night

What do you do when your bladder is full? Do you ever wake up in the night with a full bladder or with the feeling that you need to pee? Does it sometimes happen more than once in one night?
What would you do if you got up in the night because you had to pee and you couldn’t find the bathroom? Would you go back to bed? Would you keep looking for the bathroom until you found it?
What would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night with an overwhelming thirst and you had forgotten to put a glass of water on the bedside table like you normally did?
What would you do if you got up in the night because you were desperately thirsty and you couldn’t find the bathroom or the kitchen to get yourself a drink of water? What if you couldn’t find the light switches either?
When you were a child, did you ever crawl into your parents’ bed because you felt afraid in the night?
Do you, have you or did you ever let your children crawl into bed with you because they are or were afraid of the dark or of something else in the night?
Do you ever have nightmares or bad dreams? Have the nightmares or bad dreams ever shaken you so badly that you wanted to get up, even though it was nighttime?
How would you feel and what would you do if you woke up from a deep sleep and you were in a strange place you had never been before and nothing was recognizable and it seemed like you were alone?
How would you feel and what would you do if you woke up in the night and you weren’t in your own bed? What if there were a stranger lying asleep beside you?
Have you ever gotten up in the night to have something to eat because you felt hungry?
What if you got up in the night to have cookies and milk because you felt hungry and you couldn’t find the kitchen? What if the place you were in was like a maze?
What would you say to someone who told you it was the middle of the night when it was actually the middle of the day? What if they told you needed to go to bed in the middle of the day?
How would you feel and what would you do if you lived alone and you found strangers in your house at night when you got up out of bed to get a drink of water?
What would you do and how would you feel if you went to the bathroom in the night, and when you were finished you didn’t know how to get way back to your bedroom? Would you stay in the bathroom? Would you try to find your bedroom?
If you were in a strange place where you were being held prisoner, and a chance arose to escape, would you take it even if it were nighttime?
How would you feel if you lay down on the sofa for a nap on a sunny afternoon and the next thing you knew you woke up in someone else’s bed in the dark with pyjamas on?
Have you ever gone into a room to get or do something and then forgotten what you went to get or do? What if that happened to you in the night? What if it were in a hotel?
Have you or do you know anyone who has sleep walked? Do you ever get up in the night and have only a vague memory of having done so the next day? Do you sometimes feel groggy and disoriented when you wake up? Do you ever get out of bed and function like you’re on “autopilot?”
Is it harder or easier to navigate in the dark than in the light? Would it be harder or easier if you forgot to put your glasses on?
Is it normal for healthy adults to go to bed at 7 p.m and sleep straight through to 7 a.m the next morning? Do you sleep 12 hours a night without waking on a regular basis?