It is incredibly taxing to navigate these shifts, especially when you are trying to pin down a moving target like medication timing and symptom onset. Explaining “Sundowning” to your followers—who likely know Susan as a vibrant person—requires a balance of medical clarity and the raw reality of what you are seeing at home.
Since you are seeing these episodes happen as early as 8:00 AM, the first thing to clarify for your audience is that the name is actually a bit of a misnomer.
How to Explain it to Your Followers
1. Define the “Flicker” (The Concept). Explain that Sundowning isn’t just “being tired.” It is a neurological phenomenon where a person with cognitive challenges becomes increasingly confused, anxious, or agitated. You might describe it as a “short circuit” in the brain’s internal clock.
2. Clarify the Timing (The “Early” Factor) Since it’s hitting Susan early, you can explain it like this:
“While it’s called ‘Sundowning,’ it doesn’t always wait for the sun to go down. For Susan, the ‘internal sunset’ can happen much earlier. It’s less about the time of day and more about the brain’s limited energy reserves being depleted.”
Observations on the Timing Shift
It is notable that moving the Entacapone and Levodopa (LD) shifted her “break” from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM.
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The Medication “Gap”: Often, what appears to be Sundowning in the morning is actually a “wearing-off” effect or “morning akinesia.” If her brain doesn’t have enough dopamine after the overnight fast, the confusion and agitation can mimic Sundowning symptoms immediately upon waking.
The 3:00 PM Wall: By stopping or adjusting those doses today, you likely cleared the morning hurdle, but she hit a different wall at 3:00 PM. This suggests her “cognitive battery” currently has about 7 hours of charge before the “static” takes over.
Me:
It seems to me that there is less known about neurological disorders than any other disorder/diseases.
