What Do You Do When...

What do you do when you're trying to keep someone out of bed but they don't remember that they've been in bed all day?

Yesterday afternoon RD (Rob's dad) got out of bed around noon-ish and came downstairs.  I fixed him lunch.  He ate slowly and we chatted while I got some beef yum-yum (aka boeuf bourguignon) started.  And then he went back up to sleep.  Without even telling me that's what he was doing.  I followed him up the stairs to make sure he was okay, and he went into his room.  Far be it from me to follow him in there in case he's, ya know, getting changed or something.  So I hovered until it was time to run back down to continue dinner.  Rob checked in on him when I told him I was shy about poking my head in and confirmed that he had gotten back into bed.  Sigh.

He got up around 4 and we had dinner at 5:30.  And at 6:15 he wanted to go back to bed!

I mean, what can we do? He's tired and he doesn't remember that he's been in bed all day long so naturally he wants to lay down, even if it's just to watch TV in his room.  We can't stop him.  He's a grown man and is very much used to doing what he wants to do.  It just so happens that he has no context of the rest of the day in which to put his actions.

I knew that his early bedtime would mean that he'd be up at strange hours.  And sure enough we got a rude awakening at 4:00 this morning when he tried to adjust his bed (one of those Craftmatic thingies) so he could watch TV...and set off the vibrating massage function.

Of course we didn't know it was the massage function.  We thought the house was about to fall down or construction was being done or something.  How that can be considered relaxing is beyond me - I'm surprised knick knacks weren't falling off of shelves!

Finally the darn thing shut itself off, which is good since neither Rob nor his dad could figure out how to do it - they didn't even know what was happening in the first place! But Rob looked up directions online and found out why it was shaking the walls down, while I tried to get a little more sleep.  I did manage to doze on and off. 

Dinner was going to be pork chops which I would prepare this morning.  It is now going to be spaghetti and leftover meatballs since there was no way I was getting out of bed until I absolutely had to.  What can you do?

What can you do about the entire situation? At least he'll have physical therapy during the week to get him moving, but that's only for the next 8 weeks.  I hate to say this, but I brought up the idea that maybe we should tell him that he's going to have a visitor - that's the only way he'll get out of bed when Rob asks him to.  And within a certain amount of time he'll most likely forget about this visitor.  I just don't know.

The worst part is, and I hate to say this but I'm trying to be as honest as possible...Life is just easier when he's in bed.  I know it's not good for him, he needs exercise, he needs to be on a regular sleep schedule.  But when he's upstairs he's not wandering around, trying to 'call the office' (when he doesn't remember the #), pressing the wrong buttons on the remote and messing up the TV, looking around the fridge for something he swears I told him he could heat up for lunch.  Or asking uncomfortable questions about his parents who passed years ago but who he swears he just spoke to on the phone earlier in the day, or about where his briefcase and laptop are (they're at the office so the work can be done, but of course he doesn't understand this...or he does one minute but not the next).

So as much as I know it's not good for him to be in bed, I have to breathe a sigh of relief just the same.  It's not the proudest I've ever been of myself, that's for sure.  But I just don't know how else to handle this right now.  My biggest hope is that the therapists give us some guidance because I know I can speak for the two of us when I say that we're lost.

Oh, here's another one I just thought of: How do you convince someone to shower when they're convinced that they already took not one but two showers that day??