A somber hello, and could use everyone's advice.

[Guest guest]

Good morning everyone.

How profoundly sad I am. Tuesday morning, Charlotte, Mark, and all

the rest who are struggling so. We weathered the tropical storm ok

here in Florida. Not too much damage, but this morning the wind is

howling like a snow blizzard, even though we are on the severe west

coast. Thought it would be a memory by now.

As most of you know, my computer time is severely limited, but Ken is

sleeping this morning and I got a chance to catch up a bit.

When I first joined this group, I couldn't relate to most of you.

Not that I didn't have sympathy and compassion, but that I just

didn't see the things in Ken that I was reading about, and the things

he was complaining about had few answers. I read thru some 800 e-

mails from this group this morning and found Ken is much more like

others in the group now.

I read with much interest the letters of sleep problems. In the 26

years we've been married, he has had a propensity toward sleep

problems. It came and went though. He would go for a week or two

and nearly beat me to death in his sleep. I could not for the life

of me figure out how he could come straight up from a sound sleep to

sock me directly in the nose!, or the sturnum, or wherever he chose.

Often, I would wake to his restlessness, his cursing (which he never

does awake) his beginning of punching motions, and I would jump out

of bed quickly to avoid the hit. Although, as I mentioned there was

no warning, just awakened to unreal, unrelenting pain from his fist.

He would even get up and run thru the house thinking he was

protecting his family. Always fighting in these dreams, and that was

the total reverse of his personality. Then he might go a couple of

weeks or months before he did this behavior again. I've mentioned it

to doctors, and they just tell me to duck.

He doesn't do that much anymore, but of late he's had much trouble

sleeping. He takes 45 mg of remeron and 10 mg of ambien at 10:30.

It used to put him right out, but now he goes to bed and it's forever

before he falls asleep,but the whole time, we are rearranging the

covers, changing pillows, asking for more xanax, or another sleeping

pill. And the tingling in the legs is worse than every. I don't

remember who it was that said she couldn't go to bed until her

husband did is right on the money. There is absolutely no use. Yopu

no sooner take care of one of his problems, get back in bed, snuggle

down to sleep and you hear this whisper... " will you rub my feet

again " ....or the next thing, can you straighten the covers, by now

you've gotten back up 3-4 times, but...you're not thru. I have too

much/too little covers, and on and on. There is no use trying to go

to sleep here until Ken is sound asleep. Otherwise that sleepy ready

for bed feeling is totally gone, you're wide awake from all the

exercise. Ken is sound to sleep and I'm channel surfing trying to

get sleepy again. Whew! I can relate.

We're battling constipation now. He has irritable bowel

syndrom, which often led to weeks of diarreah and weight loss.

The constipation started about 3 weeks ago. I first bulked up his

fiber intake, ad started with a stool softner. No results. After a

few days he was in such pain I gave him an enema, which brought

relief from the trapped air and some bm. I introduced foods that he

had to steer clear of because of the spastic colon, thinking that

would do the trick! Very limited success. I added a laxative. I

forget the exact timeline, but a few days later he had some success.

In the beginning his back was killing him, but now it's better. In

retrospect when we told his doctor his back was killing him and he

was constipated, shouldn't he have put the two together? He just

abruptly said Ken couldn't have anything for his back, it would send

him into orbit.

Ken saw a commercial on TV for Milk of Magnesia, and just knew that

would work, the tv said so! I dashed out and got some for him. It's

three days later and he still hasn't gone.

This is not easy to talk about , but please read on, perhaps your

loved one is like this.

Yesterday, he was so miserable he asked for another enema, which

brought relief, but showed me he hasn't maintained good bathing

habits. He had no noticeable odor. I was shocked to find he was

completely raw, with oozing sores around the genetal area that hae

crusted in the folds of his legs. At that point a very sickening

odor was present. He denied any pain.

Some of you will remember, I work 40 hours, plus clean offices at

night. Not by choice, but necessity.

Yesterday I removed everything but the stool softner, and added a

fibercon tablet (he refuses the metamucil and etc.)and senakot

laxative. We'll see how we do with this.

Any thoughts, suggestions, tongue lashing's accepted!

Hugs

Betty