Trach for patient with Dementia?

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Trach for patient with Dementia?

Posted by GBoogie on May 26, 2001 at 21:00:50:
I am almost at wits end.
Mom is 69 years old and we used to think she had Alzheimer's until I put "memory loss NOT Alzheimer's" into a search engine and learned about OSA.
She has been on CPAP and then autoPAP treatment for over 4 months now. I've been thru 5 masks, 3 machines and 4 pressure settings. I've read a lot and learned a lot. I've used Melatonin, St. John's Wort, Acetyl-L-Carnitine and decaffeinated tea bags in my quest to get Mom to sleep thru the night while breathing the whole time.
Sometimes she shows so much promise. Her first week on treatment was remarkable. She lost the bags under her eyes, stayed awake all day, remembered conversations from the previous day, and was easy to get along with.
Other times I could smack her. I've been over to her house to set up the equipment every night for over four months, with maybe 3 exceptions. She's truly a klutz.
I thought I had just solved all her problems and that she was on the road to recovery. She had 3 nights in a row sleeping over 6.5 hours with an avg. AHI of only 1.5
Then last night she only slept with the mask on for 4.5 hours, even though she returned to bed (and sleep) for another 2 or 3 hours. I've stressed the importance of never sleeping without the autoPAP and gone over how to snap-off/snap-on the hose from the mask in the event she wakes and has to pee. But she didn't and I could strangle her. She was almost normal yesterday but was such a dingbat today, and it's all because she went back to sleep without snapping the hose back onto the mask. (Her O2 level dropped to 72% during her study.)
When I went to make a cup of tea, I found regular tea bags in her cannister, despite the fact that I had removed all the regular bags before and there were still 2 boxes of decaf ones right on her shelf. As Charlie Brown said, Arghh!!!
I'm getting frustrated, especially because it seems that I try so much harder to help her than she tries to help herself. Helping herself last night literally would have been a snap.
I've considered renting a hospital bed and strapping down her arms at night so she can't get out of bed.
Finally, my question: Is somebody in the state I've described a good candidate for a trach? I know it would work and I think that after a month or so it could be removed and she could handle CPAP on her own, because the cognitive issues would improve or go away. What I'm worried about is the amount of attention one has to pay to the wound as it heals and the things one has to avoid doing in the weeks following the surgery. With my luck she would decide to go for a swim the day after getting a hole in her throat and drown herself.

Follow Ups:

Re: Trach for patient with Dementia? Been There Done That 5/27/01 (0)

Re: Trach for patient with Dementia? Shelbyscout 5/26/01 (0)

Archived Non-CPAP Forum5 viewing only. To post a new topic go to the Rest Forum Homepage

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Sleep Deprivation due to Sleep Apnea and insufficient sleep are common and can present as insomnia, narcolepsy, or idiopathic hypersomnia. In infants and children sleep problems commonly present themselves as ADD or ADHD.