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Hi
I feel like a stranger after being gone for so long. We have been living a nightmare, but praise be! It's getting better.
My dad is mid 80s, and has been in uncontrollable pain. He finally went to a doctor who said he needed a knee replacement. However the knee surgeon said that Dad's age and health were not favorable to the surgery, and sent him back to doctor. The doctor gave him cortizone shots, which helped the pain in the knee a little, but did nothing for the pain that flooded him from neck to ankles. He went back again to doctor, who then prescribed a muscle relaxant and a pain killer.
The next morning after taking the pain killer, Dad started having hallucinations. As the day went on, he had more. The next day, they continued. We called the doctor, who said to stop giving him the meds, and she prescribed a different pain killer. The hallucinations continued to a point where we took him back to the doctor's office and he was admitted to the hospital. The hallucinations continued there. We kept a family member in the room with him day and night, as the hospital was short staffed and we feared he would would leave his room, following some delusion, and get hurt.
They changed his med again, and sent him home. By home, I mean my house. I was not comfortable with the idea of him going home, and in addition, my mother is experiencing confusion, so she would be of no help. So hubby and I watched him night and day, pulled furniture across the stair opening so he wouldn't fall down.
Finally everything came to a head a week ago. Dad ate supper, and then the delusions set in again. This time they were nonstop and he was becoming agitated and a little violent, swinging his cane. I called my sisters, and we all agreed that we needed to get him to the emergency room. With the help of brothers in law, we got him into the car, seated in the middle of the back seat so that he couldn't reach the door handles and open the doors while on the road. When we reached the ER, he was totally whacked out. He got mean, told us he was committing suiicide as soon as he could, that he was cutting us out of the will... You would not believe what he said.
Understand. Dad is educated, articulate, intellectual, spiritual, and has a fantastic sense of humor. But none of that was evident. In the space of an hour, my father had changed personality. I mourned that I never had a chance to say goodby to the Dad I knew and loved. His body was still there, but it was not my dad. It seemed as if an alien had taken over.
The ER doctor diagnosed him as over medicated and dehydrated. In the space of 7 days, he had been prescribed 5 new meds. The first pain killer was the one that tripped everything else. And his body was not excreting it because he was not drinking or eating. He lost 29 pounds in a 2 week period, but didn't lose the chemicals in the meds. They started an IV, and send him home (to my house) hours later. The hallucinations still were there, but we could see that they were becoming less intense.
I have good news. Dad has not had a hallucination for about 3 days, and his personality is almost back to normal. This is due to the meds finally passing through his body. Yesterday at our family birthday party, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and began to read it to us. It was an apology for anything that he said or did that might have hurt us. He began to cry and said that never did he want to hurt us.
He said that during this entire time, he was so frightened, not knowing what was wrong but knowing that something was very wrong. Yet he had no control over it. We all had a good cry and assured him that we knew it was not him talking during that time, but rather the meds talking. He has no memory at all of much of the last two weeks, which is probably a good thing. He is still weak and in pain, but I think I have my Dad back.
I am exhausted. Dad and Mom are in the own home again, and we think the nightmare has ended.
I feel like a stranger after being gone for so long. We have been living a nightmare, but praise be! It's getting better.
My dad is mid 80s, and has been in uncontrollable pain. He finally went to a doctor who said he needed a knee replacement. However the knee surgeon said that Dad's age and health were not favorable to the surgery, and sent him back to doctor. The doctor gave him cortizone shots, which helped the pain in the knee a little, but did nothing for the pain that flooded him from neck to ankles. He went back again to doctor, who then prescribed a muscle relaxant and a pain killer.
The next morning after taking the pain killer, Dad started having hallucinations. As the day went on, he had more. The next day, they continued. We called the doctor, who said to stop giving him the meds, and she prescribed a different pain killer. The hallucinations continued to a point where we took him back to the doctor's office and he was admitted to the hospital. The hallucinations continued there. We kept a family member in the room with him day and night, as the hospital was short staffed and we feared he would would leave his room, following some delusion, and get hurt.
They changed his med again, and sent him home. By home, I mean my house. I was not comfortable with the idea of him going home, and in addition, my mother is experiencing confusion, so she would be of no help. So hubby and I watched him night and day, pulled furniture across the stair opening so he wouldn't fall down.
Finally everything came to a head a week ago. Dad ate supper, and then the delusions set in again. This time they were nonstop and he was becoming agitated and a little violent, swinging his cane. I called my sisters, and we all agreed that we needed to get him to the emergency room. With the help of brothers in law, we got him into the car, seated in the middle of the back seat so that he couldn't reach the door handles and open the doors while on the road. When we reached the ER, he was totally whacked out. He got mean, told us he was committing suiicide as soon as he could, that he was cutting us out of the will... You would not believe what he said.
Understand. Dad is educated, articulate, intellectual, spiritual, and has a fantastic sense of humor. But none of that was evident. In the space of an hour, my father had changed personality. I mourned that I never had a chance to say goodby to the Dad I knew and loved. His body was still there, but it was not my dad. It seemed as if an alien had taken over.
The ER doctor diagnosed him as over medicated and dehydrated. In the space of 7 days, he had been prescribed 5 new meds. The first pain killer was the one that tripped everything else. And his body was not excreting it because he was not drinking or eating. He lost 29 pounds in a 2 week period, but didn't lose the chemicals in the meds. They started an IV, and send him home (to my house) hours later. The hallucinations still were there, but we could see that they were becoming less intense.
I have good news. Dad has not had a hallucination for about 3 days, and his personality is almost back to normal. This is due to the meds finally passing through his body. Yesterday at our family birthday party, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and began to read it to us. It was an apology for anything that he said or did that might have hurt us. He began to cry and said that never did he want to hurt us.
He said that during this entire time, he was so frightened, not knowing what was wrong but knowing that something was very wrong. Yet he had no control over it. We all had a good cry and assured him that we knew it was not him talking during that time, but rather the meds talking. He has no memory at all of much of the last two weeks, which is probably a good thing. He is still weak and in pain, but I think I have my Dad back.
I am exhausted. Dad and Mom are in the own home again, and we think the nightmare has ended.
