Hospital visit caused mother mental problems - Women's Health Message Board

gus904 · 05-25-2006, 06:19 AM

My Mother (age 75 - very poor health) has recently had two trips to hospital where she needed to stay for several nights. On both occasions she started to think that doctors were trying to kill her, started seeing things and became very very agitated and very very scared. She is normally of sound mind. The last visit she became violent and I had to visit the hospital at 3 AM to calm her down. (I ended up staying there all night).
Has anyone experienced this? Can anyone offer any suggestions on what I can do to stop this (or at least minimise it).
Thanks.

sunnydaze1 · 05-25-2006, 07:09 AM

If she was on heavy-duty pain medication, she could have been hallucinating. Also, at her age it's not unusual that she could have the very early stages of dementia which would also be instensified by any pain medication.

That's what happened to my mom after a major surgery; but thankfully she's back to her old self even though there is still some confusion going on.

You might check out the Alzheimer forum on this board for more advice.

SRMom · 05-25-2006, 12:23 PM

This happened to my father-in-law after he broke his arm. He was taking pain medication (Vicodin) and had a really bad reaction to it. He was hallucinating, became very angry, etc. He said he could see a dog on the ceiling, for example. He ended up in the ER and when they took him off the pain meds and his system cleared, he was back to normal. They explained that the meds build up in your system, and elderly people have slower metabolisms, so he was basically overdosing because his system couldn't process the meds normally.

imaworrier · 06-12-2006, 11:43 AM

If your mom wasn't on pain meds, I agree this could be the beginning of dementia because my grandmother went through the exact same thing before we knew she had dementia.