We’ve been taking care of my mom who has dementia for over six years now. Within the past year it’s gotten really bad. She can go three days with no sleep calling for help and crying and counting and talking all night and all day long. I feel like our house is a house of horrors, and the saddest thing is she just can’t stop. Has anyone else experienced this,
Your post is back on November 1, 2025, so I am hoping that you have found some relief by now, but if not, please read on. My wife did not have dementia, but she was very sick, and so I was able to help her myself. However, I have known other friends who have had family members with varying dementia. Eventually, the only help that would turn things around was to move the loved-one into a nursing home, where (as others have stated) proper medication (and scheduled routine) can be administered to calm down the person. If you do this, it is important that the nursing home takes Medicaid, as your mom's finances will be drawn down, until Medicaid takes over. I will leave you with what others have said they were told by the nursing home. It goes something like this...it is good that your loved-one is here...we will look after her, so that you can go back to being your loved-one's (son/daughter/wife/husband). I hope this helps in some way.
Maybe it's time to have her evaluated, and steps taken to make her life the best it can be, without you dancing attendance. My DH had to care for his mom for almost 2 years like this and it took him to his knees, mentally. I feel like we lost 2 years of our retirement, never being able to go anywhere b/c mom might need him.
Please consider placing Mom in memory care . This is no longer sustainable at home .
I’ve worked on memory care units . Certain patients get their days and nights mixed up and we let them . Perhaps your Mom will be like that . Is she partly upset because you are all trying to get her to go to bed ?
The only thing that helped my dad's dementia related insomnia was finding the proper medication so he could sleep. Plus an as needed anti-anxiety.
We learned his condition would not get better and that meds were a necessary part of this stage in his life. He continued to decline, which is sadly what happens with dementia.
Best of luck to you.
Truly, what anyone else has experienced isn't truly relevant to yours and your sister's situation, which is the typical one of having taken on care that has entered hopeless and endless, and which progresses yearly to requiring more and more of you until it is where it is now.
Where is it now? Easy answer.
Right now the care you are attempting is no long helping your loved one and is no longer sustainable for you two sisters. It is care in which a STAFF and several SHIFTS of 24/7 care is required.
l am so sorry. I know you will have been talking together. There's no easy answer here. The answer requires mourning and recognizing that often the end of life doesn't have any good answers. Of course that can be true of ANY stage of life. The trick is to recognize it.
Do stick around and read together here. I think you will come to a solid guilt-free realization that not everything can be fixed. Some things can only to mourned.
She needs medication, and it often takes a lot of adjusting to get the right mix. These symptoms might never stop, but they may get better with meds. Without meds, forget it! In a memory care facility with 24/7 trained professionals, they have a lot of experience and know how to deal with it, plus they aren’t exhausted like home caregivers. It really is like living in a house of horrors, and you deserve relief! There are some things that aren’t best handled at home, and these symptoms are twelve hundred of them.
Good luck with a difficult problem.
Once you get her agitation under control it may be time for you to consider MC for her. Many here have been in your shoes and have good guidance to give you.