Recently my mom has been displaying very aggressive, and agitated behavior towards me. She has vascular dementia and she seems to be declining quickly. She is in a NH and has been for three months. The aggression and severe agitation is new, she is coming off of having a UTI and I know that can change her behavior but it honestly seems like the more I visit her the worse she gets.
Today when I went to visit her, her aggression, agitation was off the charts! She would usually get agitated when I was about to leave which she did today but as soon as I arrived she began screaming and cursing as soon as she saw me. She was by the nurses station and my husband quickly whisked her back to her room while I spoke to the head nurse who explained that they did a deep clean of the rooms and she has been like this all day. When I went to her room she was over the top confused and paranoid accusing me of conspiring with the staff against her. She calmed down after a while but when we went two leave two hours later she threw a fit. Yelling, screaming, swearing, the whole nine. I tried to keep my cool ( I am usually pretty patient with her) but there was no appeasing her. It was like nothing I have ever seen. I eventually had to call in the staff and had to just leave with her yelling at me while I was walking away. Any thoughts? Is this the vascular dementia progressing? I don't think it's the UTI as she has been on antibiotic for 10 days now.
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@Partsmom - I am sure it is possible but something in my gut says no. I can't explain why other than I just don't think that is the case.
She always gets somewhat agitated when I arrive, which is usually every three days or so. I always attributed this to a rush of emotion that she can't really verbalize the way she wants. Sometimes it would be crying, sometimes excitement, sometimes agitated, some times moving through all of them at once, but never like this. She often would do similar behaviors to what she displayed today but usually I could work around it. Today there was just no way. I will definitely be looking into all the suggestions. This has to be by far the hardest thing I have done in my life to date. It had to be the hardest thing to watch someone go through.
Her confusion has been steadily increasing over the past few weeks and she is aware that she is becoming more confused.
People with dementia can't tell you what's wrong all the time. So when they act out, you have to play Nancy Drew.
In your shoes, I would be asking the nh doc for a full workup, blood, urine psychiatry. And if that is going to take forever, I'd call 9111 and have her taken to the ER for possible admission to the hospital. My suspicion is that there is an infection going on somewhere.