My mom is in the hospital. She’s been in for about a week sometimes at night she gets triggered and thinks that the nurses are trying to kill her and she gets really agitated and yelling and screaming, saying that we don’t love her and she’s wanting to leave when she can’t, it’s really hard to watch eventually she’ll calm herself down and then be OK. Anybody have any suggestions on what could be wrong and any suggestions on how to calm down my father came up to help to calm her down and he couldn’t even do it.
My MIL had no dementia. She passed in 2017 at age 77 from COPD caused by smoking for 50 years. She was hospitalized a few times before her death with breathing crises including some intubations. A couple of those times, when she came to, she completely flipped out, screaming and throwing huge tantrums, demanding more and more sleeping pills but at the same time yelling that she was afraid she would die in her sleep and insisting the nurse should sit by her bedside all day and all night to “watch her breathe.” I had sympathy because the whole situation was really upsetting and terrifying. Though OTOH, what’s the nursing staff suppose to do? They can’t sit by her side all night. They have too many other patients even in the ICU. Plus she had all kinds of monitors on her. Anyway, they told us it was hospital psychosis.
Welcome to the Forum.
As seems just now to be commonplace with new members there is no profile filled in. This means that we have no information from you about yourself and about the caregiving circumstances you are in.
Without that background it is almost impossible to give you a good answer, so I am very hopeful you will fill that in for us.
With what little you have given us I cannot tell what your mom's hospitalized with or even what her underlying condition is NORMALLY in her home. I find I cannot offer you much other than to refer you to the doctors and the medical team caring for her.
Some medical conditions mean that there is not enough 02 flowing to the brain and, particularly later in day and in the night there is great confusion. Some medical conditions can cause disturbances in the electrolytes that allow our cells to function at optimum. Some medications meant to "help" actually make things worse. Anesthesia, if needed, can sometimes be devastating to seniors. For those with underlying conditions of dementia the change in environment is terrifying.
You can see--I am just GUESSING HERE. It could be any of the above or none.
I would discuss this with the doctors and ask them if there is any reason they can think of for the change in mom.
In the end, do know that your experience is quite common. As a retired RN it is one that I, working evenings and nights, was very familiar with. It presents a real danger to the patient. There are times when there is no good answer and it falls into the general pot of "hospital psychosis", which is something you can google--meaning we just don't have an answer.
I want to wish you the best of luck and hope mom will improve, return to her known environment, and be back to normal.
But if she's already been diagnosed with dementia, then of course it could be sundowning and again there are medications to help with that.