Sundown and Trouble

Sundowners is a phenomena well known to nurses that work in the hospital. It's a condition in which a patient becomes terribly confused and sometimes hallucinates when the sun goes down. Sundowners is associated with the earlystages of Alzheimer's disease, but no definitive connection has been made. It's also considered to be a mood or even a sleep disorder.
The person afflicted with Sundowners exeperience extreme agitation and confusion, and it was once belived that the syndrome was a result of missed "light cues" from day to night.

Whatever the cause it is a most interesting phenomena. It's also disturbing because when in a facility, the concern is safety of the patient. All too often, that concern for safety turns into either physical or chemical restraint.

One such gentleman that we cared for on our floor of the hospital, was a charming guy during the day, then around dinner time, he turned into a wild man. We'd discussed restraints, and perhaps that would have been a good idea, but we weren't willing to participate.

It took a little mental noodling to keep him busy. Since it was a realatively quiet night, we were able to keep him occupied folding washcloths, towels, and pretty much anything else that came into view.

Soon as he got a nice neat stack of washcloths, one of those "darn clumsy nurses" would up-end the stack, and the gentleman would sigh, and start to refold them.

He got a nice reward though, three of us went into his room with midnight snacks.

Soon as morning came, his mental fog lifted, and he was back to what we percieved was his norm. I'm not sure what happened to him, as when I left, it was the end of my work week. When I came back on shift, he'd been discharged.

He left me a little gift though, a washcloth, folded up the size of a postage stamp.