Increasing delusional behaviour & anxiety

With my sister at work on-call on Friday, I had to respond to a potential emergency on Friday. My mother had walked out on MG, one of the live-in caregivers, without her coat after dark and wouldn't come home.

Turned out that MG and my mother were having a "normal" evening looking through the newspaper together. When they came across the real estate section they started talking about the price of houses and looking at the pictures of what was on the market.

Then my mother somehow got it into her head that MG was trying to buy my mother's house. From there she went on to worry about where she was going to live and what was going to become of her. Despite reassurances from MG, she couldn't let go of the idea that she was going to lose her house. In her typical manner, she had to put space between herself and the source of her confusion, so she walked out. When she saw that MG was trying to follow her, she ducked around the corner and walked faster and MG lost track of her.

That's when MG called my sister, who called me to check it out. By the time I got there, my mother had already returned home, but when she was told I would be coming over, she left again! MG had found out in the mean time that my mother had gone to a neighbour's house. The neighbours all know about my mom's condition, and this couple is a nurse and police officer, so thankfully they were both experienced in dealing with this sort of thing.

I was very nervous about going over there to get her, because I was afraid of her reaction towards me. When I went to get her, I played it all down, not making a fuss, and it seemed to work because the nighbour told her "You can go home now" and she did.

My mother kind of ignored me though and acted as though nothing unusual was going on. I went along with it. When we settled her back into the house, she was still obviously anxious. She was hyperventilating and not making any sense. It was hard to get her to focus. We finally got her to have dinner and take her meds, and then she finally seemed to settle down.

I had intended to stay until she went to bed, which is usually 9 or 9:30 (except for lately), but by 11pm she was still alert and watching TV. But she was calm and MG said she could handle things and said I could go home, so I did.

During all this, I did get a chance to catch up with MG about how things are going. Fortunately, MG is doing great and this sort of thing does not stress her out. She seems to have a really good way with my mother and they get along great.

But MG did report that my mom's anxiety has gone back up to several anxiety attacks per day and has not improved since she and HC began taking care of her as we'd hoped. She also mentioned more regular confusion and delusion. For example, she often thinks her grandkids are playing upstairs, or that someone is sleeping in her basement, that me & AC's dog is somewhere in the house, or that someone is coming over to the house when they are not.

My sister will be getting in touch with the Nurse Case manager and geriatrician today to give them an update about all of this, and we expect that they will re-evaluate her medication.

The big concern as well is that if she becomes increasingly suspicious of her caregivers that they may not be able to manage her anymore. This of course means looking into moving her to a care home sooner than we'd hoped.

Hopefully this kind of episode will not become too regular too quickly and she can still stay home as long as possible. But we are again facing the possibility that things may happen sooner than we'd like.

Speaking for myself, I would really like her to hang in there for at least another 6 months before we have to consider moving her to a care home. I'm sure my siblings agree with me for other reasons, but for me I am afraid of how having to deal with that during the time that I'm having a new baby will affect my mental health. And I don't want to have to tell my siblings "No, I can't help you" when they need my help, but I may have to.

As usual, I will try not to worry about things until I have to, but it's hard!