gims

I don't know that you need to get the police involved too soon, because that creates its own problems. But an independent medical person might be a good idea and perhaps a blood test. Call it a "second opinion" which is absolutely acceptable. You might want to hire a nurse or companion you can trust to go and stay with the elderly person. It may not be foul play but may be some simple over the counter med, or the combination of meds. My opinion now is that most of our elderly are being over medicated and we're calling it "dementia" but really it's our f***ed up meical system (pardon my language).

we've been going through something similar with my 91 year old mom, except that a doctor was prescribing meds she didn't need which created a dementia that caused her to be hospitalized 3 times. It all started last summer after my dad died -- mom has macular and I'm pretty sure dad had been watching out for her.

We've detoxed her now (got her off everything, and waited a few weeks) and she's back to her old self (though has short term memory probs). We've hired a nurse to stay with her during the day. At first mom resisted the idea, but now she can't live without her new companion.

My sister spent a lot of time researching drug side effects (mostly on the internet) and found that even over the counter drugs can cause big problems in the elderly. Like Excedrin and Benedryl. My sister found prescriptions for things like Ambien in mom's bathroom, and replaced the drugs with vitamins, because mom is a compliant patient.

She lives in a retirement home that has its own medical staff (doctor and nurses) and we're very concerned about their competence. It seems that their motto is to over-medicate. Whether they're well-meaning or not is up for interpretation.

When mom was released from the hospital in January, some friends became involved, and he's a doctor, so he asked for and received all the release records, and then intervened on our behalf and spoke to the doctor at the retirement community. I believe he posed as our cousin, but I don't think that was necessary. What we found was that the stupid hospital upon her release had prescribed every single medication she'd ever been prescribed going back some years!

We're still trying to impress upon mom not to take anything! yesterday she said to me, "When a doctor prescribes something, I take it." Now we're not sure if the problem is just that the doctor is prescribing it, or if the nurse is one of those angel of mercy types that wants to put her out of her misery. We've told the social worker our concerns. In fact, I called her yesterday. When mom was last in the hospital, she was acting so weird that they gave her Haldol. She was released a couple days later to the retirement community where they gave her a cognition test (which she failed utterably). Duh! She didn't know where she was, and barely even knew _who_ she was. She wasn't wearing her hearing aids and she has macular. So yesterday I called the social worker to say hey, make sure the test is fair this time, okay? Well, since mom is now detoxed, she did fine.

There's a community eating area where my sister took my mom for lunch yesterday. The residents there applauded our family for being the most supportive!