He was healthy and responsive in other ways, so I tended to look on it as a coping mechanism. Keeping his eyes shut cut out a lot of external (possibly overwhelming) information/activity. It also served to limit verbal communication as people tended to think he was asleep - or at least drifting off.
i don't recall it happening for two days solid - more like 12hr stretches. I think if he had been like this for days at a time I would have contacted the doctor to get him checked out just to make sure.
There did come a time, quite late on in the disease, when he literally slept for days at a time. It was an abnormally deep sleep and there was no rousing him from it until he was ready. It was different in as far as he was unresponsive to any kind of coaxing to do anything - including eating, drinking, taking meds etc - all of which he had still managed to do when he simply had his eyes shut for long periods of time.
