Sundowning or Sundowners more commonly known can happen at any age and it usually results in dementia… Welcome to my dad, Don… and do I have some interesting stories… Lets see how many I can do before my arms quit… This is the definition below…

a group of symptoms—such as confusion, anxiety, agitation, and pacing—that occur or worsen in the late afternoon, evening, or at night. It is most common in people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

My first memory of Don doing the weird… We are on a road trip and we had a 4 door Buick I think and we were going from Kansas to see his mom Annie Vee Otha Cooper in Bonita, Lousiana and I do have a few memories from that town, plus school…

We start the drive as soon as he gets off work and it’s a long weekend with a couple days leave…

Freda has everything ready to go, kids are packed, snacks or meals and we are off…

I remember the drives past various road side stands that sold everything you can imagine…

Well it’s getting late on the drive and Don has worked all day and now driven for several hours so we pull off at a roadside picnic place and I take a bench on one side of the table, my brother, Larry I think to the other side and Dad took the table… Mom was in the car with the little one or ones??

Well sound asleep and all of a sudden I feel movement and we are driving… I wake up and clear my throat and mom turns around, eyes wide and fear and says, “shhh dad is asleep and we are doing like 50 mph down a road at midnight!!!!

Yea you want nightmares, come visit my dreams…

So I sit back, wide awake now and look over and I think now I can’t say this part is a real memory but I think I looked at my brother and we just looked straight ahead… I don’t remember us getting any sleep and we made it to Bonita safely…

Next memory I have of Don doing the Sundowner thing, we were on Okinawa and I have the front bedroom near the front door, everybody else is down the hall and I hear a noise and I get up and I see lights on and couple more kids sticking heads out of rooms and mom is following behind Don, turning lights off and telling us all to go back to bed and we did without question… WHY???

Because he would deck your ass in a heart beat and this is a case in point…

While in the hospital at Little Rock before he died and the Neurologist was finally involved, Don was disturbed at night by a nurse and he decked her!!!

He got locked up so he couldn’t do that again, and neuro tells us he has sundowners and I laughed and said he had it most his life and she looked stunned…

Degrees don’t mean a lot to me…. Homer was there, not sure he remembers that time period in 2005/6…

So sundowners is something I am intimate with, dementia is something I have lived with my whole life, first my dad Don, now Homer for the last 30+ years…

Neuro needs to understand, it starts way earlier than they even can imagaine…

Live it and come talk to me… My Amnesia is just like Dementia!!!

I remember…

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