Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) is widely acknowledged as a core clinical feature of LBD. It often precedes or displays in concurrence with the onset of LBD. A study involving RBD and LBD (or, as it is often called, Dementia with Lewy Bodies, or DLB), can be found at https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bn/2018/9421098/.
Mr. Dewey has displayed RBD for several years preceding his diagnosis, although he claimed to never have dreams – or at least not to remember them – in the first 25 years of our marriage. They started during his tenure on the night shift at his work, and we both chalked it up to being forced to sleep well outside his normal biorhythms. Even so, the frequency and intensity of RBD has grown in the last four years. Muttering, yelling, and flailing about are all part of RBD. There have been a number of times where he has flung himself out of the bed during RBD.
I was accustomed to waking him up during such episodes, if he was yelling out in what seemed like distress. However, his neurologist advised against it, since it can cause significant confusion and disorientation, and perhaps violence. So now, I don’t wake him from an episode of RBD unless he is flailing about to the point he might hurt himself. I try to get him farther into the bed, so the chance he will fall out is reduced.
It is problematic leaving him in RBD. Like a new mother, I have become conditioned to wake up at the slightest noise from his room; when he is muttering or yelling, I’m not sleeping. Instead, I will play a game on the iPad, or trot down a YouTube rabbit hole until the RBD subsides, and I can go back to sleep – or he comes out of it and needs a trip to the bathroom, as is often the case. Then we can both go back to a more restful sleep.
Lewy, Dewey and me 