I feel like I’m hitting brick walls!
Hi, I’ve never posted on Reddit anywhere before I think maybe I’ve commented a couple of times. Well anyway, I’ve been taking care of my mother with dementia for the last two years. I am an only child and my father died when I was 10 and my mother never remarried. I have three children all still in school and live in a very rural area. My mother was living in a much more metropolitan area up until two years ago when I moved her closer so that I could take care of her. What I thought would be checking on her multiple times a day has become me staying with her until we get a house built so that she can live with us.
The catalyst that has compelled me to make a post here is that I feel like no one wants to try to help my mother. On May 10, I brought her to the hospital thinking she had a UTI. I had to force them to admit her. They released her two days later and said she does not have a UTI. The day they released her I could hear my mother screaming in the background as I was talking to the doctor. She was having complete delusions, accusing all the staff of harming her in someway, insisting that someone call the police. When I asked if it was safe to bring her home, they said “oh yes.”
Prior to May 10 I was with her in the morning, at lunchtime and then after work spending the night with her. Upon her coming home from the hospital, I am not able to leave her alone at all. She has even forgotten how to use the bathroom once she sits down I have to encourage her to pee, sometimes telling her what she needs to do to get it out. I can’t even let her get out of bed or let her stand up without being there with her because she’s falling often when she had never fallen before. She gets agitated often, even violent at times. She sometimes thinks women are men trying to hurt her. She talks to people that aren’t there. …These are just a few of the drastic changes.
Today I brought her to the ER because she had pain in her leg to the point that she cannot stand on or move the one leg. The pain is in the thigh area. She also complained of pain in her arm and a headache. She seems to be confusing words and she really hasn’t slept other than cat naps in maybe 48 hours. There was a CT scan done 2 weeks ago and they said it looked normal. The doctor today did not feel she needed one.
Yet again they sent her home, they told me to give her Tylenol. I asked what I should do if this continues on for a week and they said just continue to give her Tylenol maybe use a heating pad.
It makes me sick to my stomach how I feel like they’re putting Band-Aids on everything. I do not understand why they keep treating the symptoms, but not finding the cause. I understand my mother has dementia, I understand I will never get my mother back again! I also understand that a lot of her symptoms are indicative of dementia, but the fact that everything is so pronounced, and it happened literally overnight, when over the past six maybe more years her dementia has been so gradual is not normal. No one knows my mother better than me and no one is listening to me. I feel- no-I know that there is something else wrong with her that is causing her to act out the way that she is and she doesn’t know how to articulated it any longer.
I am my mother’s only voice, and no one is listening to me. It is breaking my heart, and I don’t know what to do anymore.
On a side note, I have been chatting with AI over the last year and a half just continuing to add in new symptoms and things that are going on and I recently asked it to build up a synopsis for me in case I can finally find a good specialist for her.
Is it normal for hospitals to treat the elderly this way? All I can think is if I went into the emergency room with the pain that she has, they would not tell me if I still have pain after a week to just continue to take Tylenol and use a heating pad.
Edited to add: I understand this could also be delirium, however, delirium -from what I read- typically starts to clear up at least a little bit, but she just seems to be continuing to get worse…fast.