A Shortcut Down Dementia Lane

Let me take you for a ride on my recent trip down Dementia Lane. On Sunday, my grandmother’s second day in the hospital, her confusion level seemed to worsen as each hour of the day slowly crept by. She could not remember things that happened five minutes ago. She would doze off and then wake up to a whole new world every time. She would jar awake and start trying to climb out of the bed thinking she “had to go” or “had to get out of this place now”… Being that she had a needle in her arm for the IV and the fact they had finally resorted to a catheter, she was not very “mobile” to just get up and out of the bed. And her mind just would not process the fact that she was in the hospital and not at her home. She just kept trying to leave this place and get away… we caught her trying to free herself from the tubes, wires, needles, etc. so many times on Sunday that I lost count! If you asked her what she was doing she would lash out in anger. I left her alone (asleep at that time) for about an hour to go get some lunch on Sunday… the scene that greeted me when I returned seriously scared the crap out of me- she was standing in the middle of the room…stark naked… and blood was EVERY where! There was blood all over her entire body from the shoulders down, all over the floor, the bed, the linens, etc. And she was standing there and very shaky-like gripping the food service table for balance… in all her glory. It was like a scene from any ol’ horror movie… my first thought was that she was hurt herself intentionally… but, as I frantically searched her, I could not find the source of all of this blood… then I wondered if she might have removed the catheter in trying to “go” to the bathroom… nope, still in tact… then I found the IV needle… ON THE FLOOR… yes, she had clearly ripped the IV out of her arm! And she had no idea that she had done it, she did not know why she was up and out of the bed or why she was naked, she did not even know about all the blood… I ran for the nurses’ station… the entire nurse staff was so surprised and moved quickly to clean up and get her back in order. We spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what she would do next… when I returned the next morning she was livid. She demanded to know what happened… she wanted to know what had happened to her. I finally realized that she was shackled to the bed rails! No wonder she was so angry! The night nurse had told me they would restrain her as a last resort… I calmed her down by telling her that I approved them attaching her to the bed… but, all day Monday she kept on trying to physically remove herself from the bed… I tried to keep her mind occupied by telling her about me and us and any thing to keep her mind from wandering. But, she would start rambling on about something (half of which I could not understand) and she would talk about things from her past as if she was back in that day or she would talk about imaginary people in the room with us… her eyes would never really focus on me when I spoke to her… she kept looking off in the distance or staring at the ceiling or look next to me. I would try to convince her that we were the only two people in the room. She would only lash out in anger that the “little boy” was just there and that “all those men” did just leave… she even thought that my mother was just in the room with her and was talking to her… the only thing I could figure out on that one was that she was mixing me up with my mom. She plays with the bed linens like she is “straightening up those papers” and keeps reaching out into the air like she sees something to grab that is not there. The last two days have been nothing but a rollercoaster ride for me with her emotions and actions. I am watching her right now as I am typing this and she is trying to “eat” the stress ball that someone brought her to squeeze in her hands for strength conditioning and she keeps reaching out toward the sunlight from the window like she sees something more. But, when her eyes catch mine staring at her, and I smile at her, she always smiles back… and then I know she is still here with ME. And that is all that matters…