Now it's Sunday morning and I thought I'd catch up a little about Saturday. As I mentioned, Steve had a rough Friday night because Dad had a rough night. I wrote a few days ago that if we had to choose between Dad having pain & delusions or being comatose, we would choose comatose. In an effort to get the amount of drugs right, we've increased them dramatically over the last few days but Dad is not comatose, and continues to roll back and forth, hit his chest, grab out for something to hold onto, and go in and out of lucidity. I know Hospice (and we) do not want to overdose, but it seems to be taking FOREVER to get Dad to a state of relaxation and sleep. Friday night he slept well for only 6 hours and yesterday he had a 5 hour nap, but otherwise he was either awake or in that restless, rolling, talking semi-sleep.
He had awakened from his nap about 6 PM yesterday and again went through hours of being awake and being in the semi-sleep. He did not start to sleep soundly until 1 AM this morning. It's now been 7 hours of relief for us, meaning we know he must be more comfortable. I was with Steve until 9:30 last night, and Dad was so restless we gave him his next set of drugs about midnight (I came to help, as it is a 2 person job, especially when you are dog-tired). I stayed until Dad fell asleep at 1. Steve was up several times after that checking on him.
Now our question is, do we wake him up to give him his meds, or let him sleep? I'm going to call Hospice to find out. I can't imagine waking him up when he finally is sleeping, but maybe he needs that continuous application. Many of the questions we have do not occur to us until we NEED to know - we don't think of all the possible situations ahead of time.
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