Robert - Interview 06

Age at interview: 77

Brief Outline: At the time of his interview Robert had recently lost his wife and was still trying to cope with the aftermath of her illness and his subsequent bereavement. Robert has found that he wakes up quite a lot in the night and hopes that, with time, his sleep pattern will settle back into the routine he had before his wife was ill. Robert likes to keep very active and enjoys engineering problems and making things. He has recently started to cycle again.

Background: Widowed, 2 children, retired Engineering Development Manager

More about me...

Robert has found that since his wife died he has struggled to get his sleep back into a reasonable pattern and finds that he wakes up in the night, and doesn’t sleep very deeply. Whilst his wife was ill he cared for her at home, which meant he had to get up several times in the night to look after her. Having such broken sleep during the night meant that he often found himself dozing during the day. Robert now finds that if he falls asleep during the day, which he does often, he will sleep very deeply and not remember any of his dreams.

 

Robert is experimenting with his sleep currently to see if he can find a way to sleep through the night. He has tried going to bed later, and going to bed earlier, but as yet this isn’t working. He does find if he wakes up at 4 am in the morning that he finds it very difficult to get back to sleep, especially if he puts the radio on and starts listening to something interesting.

 

Robert feels it is important to go to the doctor for sleep problems, largely because he has other health problems and wouldn’t want to risk taking something from the chemist that might interfere with his other medications.

 

Most of all Robert likes to go to bed and think about all the things he would like to make and do and he finds this helps him sleep. He also likes to take a few minutes in the morning doing the same thing when he wakes up. But when he gets up Robert likes to get on with things straight away.

Robert can't remember having a problem sleeping when he was a small boy, but he does remember wanting to stay in bed in the morning when he was a teenager.

Do you remember how you slept when you were a little boy. Do you remember was there a routine in your house?

 

No. No I don’t remember. Well it was during the war, and I was what 8, eight years old when the war started and we always slept in blackouts. I think I slept in a single bed and my sister and I shared a room and then she went into another room. But when I was 16 I left home, and went to become an apprentice in [Town]. I never had any trouble then. You know, apart from the bloke upstairs knocking on the floor, and go upstairs and thump him. No I never had any cause to even think about sleeping being other than natural. I was always a physically active, you know in athletics and things like that and making things. And particularly so at [Town]. Well, probably getting up in the morning was the worst thing. We had to be at work at half past seven, well if we were in the establishment itself, so it was never, never a bad routine. I always slept when I was required to.

Robert's sleep was disturbed often because of helping his wife to go to the toilet in the night.

It was when she had the last major problem and radiotherapy which induced and the steroid she took, she had to take a lot of steroids, it caused her to lose her hair, and they also brought on this type II diabetes, which mean since we didn’t going on to start with at one time, six times a night I would get up to go to the toilet, and waking, waking all the rest of the time, and in fact when we got that under control it would probably go down to three times a night. And then it went up again after Christmas. It was only two or three times a night but each time would take half an hour literally to get her up there or to get her onto the commode and so I used to dread nights.

 

Robert used to sleep during the day to cope with a lack of sleep at night whilst caring for his wife who had a terminal illness.

It meant just a change of pattern she didn’t like to go to sleep during the day because it interrupted her sleep at night. I on the other hand would lie on my couch over there and we would listen to music or something and I would just keep nodding off and sleep half an hour. So I was, my pattern changed to trying to sleep during the day and that went on for four months.

 

But it doesn’t worry me so much [broken night sleep] because I can have a little zzz zzz as my sister calls it in the armchair in the afternoon and I have got other things to stimulate me. I have to drive myself to get out of there. Plus the fact that I am very conscious that the body is still going through bereavement, bereaving, and could easily fall into a poor widower, at aged 77, a 77 year old widower who could just sit down and die, but it hasn’t got to be that way. 

Robert believes 8 hours sleep would be ideal for him based on it being a convenient length of time and what he believes he needs to feel refreshed.

I also like to ask people historically about how their sleep has changed. So what did you say was your optimum time for sleep? If you had a perfect night, how long would you sleep for? How many hours do you think would suit you?

 

Probably eight hours.

 

Where does that come from, that eight hours?

 

Well its probably when I was physically enabled again through like I think particularly for my age I am physically more, perhaps more robust thank goodness, but more active.

 

Okay.

 

And I think getting physically tired.

 

Written only'

Cutting that grass for example and keeping that garden under control is my biggest problem in life at the moment. It’s also the biggest stimulus and probably accounts for you know, being relatively active physically.

 

Because you are doing the garden?

 

So I am curious why people choose a particular length of time which they think is appropriate. Is eight hours something that you feel that you need and if so what do you base that on?

 

No I could adapt to much less than that.

 

Oh okay?

 

I think it’s convenient time wise. I think it’s good for me physically. I don’t usually need it mentally inasmuch, as I even though I know I can wake up feeling even physically tired, not very often. I don’t usually wake up feeling mentally tired. Because it is very easily said in my stage now for me to misjudge mentally tired with being depressed.

Robert, who has recently been bereaved, finds that thinking about interesting problems, such as how to build a boat trailer, helps him get to sleep.

Yes, in a sense I am experimenting because of my recent history. I am experimenting in, by going to bed early. 10 o’clock being early, and late one o’clock to see if there’s a difference.

 

There really isn’t but the constant factor is waking up. Again, we might discuss later on, I think there’s a reason for that. It might or might not be, I am not a sleep man. Waking up like last night for example, I went to bed relatively early and I generally don’t have too much problem getting to sleep because my technique for getting to sleep is to think about interesting problems, not about world problems or personal problems, but I am making a boat trailer for example and where I want the bearings of the wheels and that sort of thing. And I play the game and just thinking interesting things, which I am inventing things, making things. I must make things. I usually make them badly, but I would rather make something badly then not make it, not being able to make things would be hell on earth.

 

But therefore I can usually go to sleep fairly quickly, but generally speaking I wake up after probably about an hour, or I can sit in here in the afternoon and I could go to sleep. Yesterday I thought it was ten past two and when I looked at the clock and then I looked up and oh my gosh someone is coming at two o’clock but it wasn’t it was about quarter to nine. I had just sat down to drink a cup of coffee and I didn’t know where I was.  

Robert believes the stress from his recent bereavement has caused him to have dreams about the past where he is searching for things and people.

I dream a lot. Now, I thank that's relevant, I don't, and yes I do dream a lot and funnily enough they are dreams of people I have had, from the age of about 17 until I was 24 and I got married, I was in company virtually with the same men. Young boys, to start I was an apprentice at [town]. We had a hostel, shared a room with a particular man. You had your own particular group. And then I went further on to, it was then the College of Aeronautics and we had much more lavish accommodation then. But I think there were eleven of us went from [town] on the year that I went, on the three years that I went to [town]. And so I was still with the same groups of people and they are heavily embedded in my memory and I still have dreams where in some respects I was looking for [wife] but then they always include industry factories usually. And very often big compartments – and I am always, always something wrong, I am lost, and the one I had a couple of nights ago I had lost my shoes and somebody, I was at one stage at the top of a car and I was building this trolley thing and I was about 50 feet above the trolley and there were a lot of people underneath me, and the trolley wheels, we were whizzing down a road and I was trying to guide the trolley or tell them 'don’t go to the left there sand there'. All sorts of stuff. And it suddenly hit a wall and we all tumbled down and I was in the middle of a canteen. And I said 'someone’s stolen my shoes'. And it is all in colour. And usually for the first ten minutes when I wake up after. They are nightmares in as much as they are not, little dreams there is action going on. I can remember quite fully and we crashed and there was the works canteen and I can see it was like pork pies one and threepence written up there, and there was a big oily sort of bloke, leaning over 'what do you want' sort of thing and usually I am looking and I am in positions, for example we went from this place to a piece of Chicago that I knew, I knew where I was going. The loop in Chicago, you might know it, but I didn’t have any shoes and I didn’t know where I was staying and I was lost. And that is a common thing. I am under some sort of pressure and getting lost, but it’s usually involving people of my youth, not current people at all, but I am always with my old apprentice and students, fellow students and I am always under some sort of pressure. In that respect they are nightmares they are not encouragements and I rightly or wrongly attribute that to the current stresses.

Robert's first place to go for help with sleep would be his doctor, not the chemist, because he feels they know more about him and his health.

I would always go to the doctor yes. And after that I would, for example I ran of Citaloprams and I could fax it through to the dispensary and then send a note to the pharmacy well I knew I would be without for a couple of days because it takes a couple of day, so I see him and he will give me the stuff on the promise that is coming through. And in the case of Citalopram it probably didn’t matter, but in the case of some other it might. But I am on a good basis with them, but I have to be very careful, it’s not on the basis of being a hypochondriac. Be cautiously aware when you are 77 years old, it’s all plus. I mean it is like the noises of an old car isn’t it. You have hardly any noises in a new car, but when you hear a new rattle coming in you wonder what the hell it is. And you can more often than not, perhaps, stop it then and there.

Robert describes how the 'stop and start' sleep pattern he had when he was caring for his terminally ill wife has continued after she died.

Well I knew, I thought she was dying, and nobody had said dying, but gradually the body language of the consultants and the nurses you know, you put all this together and my own common sense I did know. But this, it still couldn’t help the problem of being awake in the worst case about six times a night when she was diabetic. When we got that under control she kept wanting to go to the toilet. And other times when she couldn’t sleep and she would want to get out of bed and so on. And that set my physical condition and I think my sleep mode until the end of April when she went and I went away for a holiday and then sleeping in my little caravan I had some good night’s sleep. But after getting refreshed as it were, I think the body was telling me you have got to have some sleep. Once I was obviously physically better, I reverted, I have reverted now to this stop and start sleeping. Previously as I could go to bed at ten o’clock, eleven o’clock and wake up at half past six or seven o’clock or when I wanted to, and have a solid night’s sleep. It is still an interrupted sleep pattern.

Robert used to dread night-time because he knew he would be up several times and he was already exhausted.

But even in those times, because she would still have a relatively good night’s sleep, I was sleeping well. It was when she had the last major problem and radiotherapy which induced, and the steroid she took, she had to take a lot of steroids, it caused her to lose her hair, and they also brought on this type II diabetes, which mean since we didn’t know what was going on to start with at one time, six times a night I would get up to go to the toilet, and waking, waking all the rest of the time, and in fact when we got that under control it would probably go down to three times a night. And then it went up again after Christmas. It was only two or three times a night but each time would take half an hour literally to get her up there or to get her onto the commode and so I used to dread nights.

 

You must have done?

 

I used to absolutely dread nights and in retrospect I can see how I was sailing close to the limit of my own endurance and eventually I couldn’t even move her in the bed and that’s when we had to call in the help from the hospice, and that was just two days away from her death then.  

Robert compared his constant watching and caring for his wife at night during the latter stages of her illness to being a sentry on guard.

Consequently I was sleeping here and she would get up, and she had diabetes as well, induced by this. And the first time, at one stage I got up nine times in one night, but she could walk and she had a little toilet just through that door and I could get her there and personally bring her back again. After a while we had to go on to the commode which was in here. And then after that the next stage when we got her diabetes a bit sorted out she would still get up three or four times. Not maybe go to the toilet but she would think she would want to and it would take me some times twenty minutes to get her up to the commode which was about there, and take her back here. And then she wouldn’t want to do anything, and so she would get back in bed for another ten minutes, and she was so weak, and she was not a fat woman but she was five foot eleven in her bare feet sort of thing and it was more then I could lift her out in the end without her helping and consequently I, although I was sleeping here I was like a sentry on guard. She would initially try and get out of bed and not wake me up, but then she couldn’t get out of bed, so any slight disturbance I was awake and active. I didn’t have to rub my eyes because I was needed, and I was like on duty for virtually 24 hours a day.

 

It meant just a change of pattern she didn’t like to go to sleep during the day because it interrupted her sleep at the end. I, on the other hand, would lie on my couch over there and we would listen to music or something and I would just keep nodding off and sleep half an hour. So I was, my pattern changed to trying to sleep during the day and that went on for four months.