In 2013 he had a UTI that caused active delirium but it resolved in 8 weeks. This time in May of 2016, dad had a UTI and delerium set in. We are still struggling with this and it has been 10 months. He has periods where he is completely normal and can last 3-4 days and then he relapses into craziness, it is like hyper delirium. He has seen a psychiatrist and we have tried many different meds for him. The psychiatrist diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and dad does fluctuate between depression and hypomania. The psychiatrist insists that he does not have dementia.
But some of the behaviors we are struggling with are very challenging:
1. Binge eating, when he is going to have a bad day he will come out in his wheelchair in the morning and go straight to the fridge and start eating everything out of the fridge. We will make him breakfast ussually 4 eggs and 2 pieces of toast and then 15 minutes later he is hungry again and eating oranges whole or cereal etc. If we limit his eating and try to redirect him to something else of interest he is physically violent with us and yells.
On days he wakes up normal this does not happen.
2. He hallucinates quite abit, sees and hears things that are not there. We have learned to work with this. Keeping him calm and reassuring him seems to be the best thing to do. We just let him know we are here and he is safe. He talks about the devil coming to get him. Alot of persecution hallucinations.
3. Dad has his memory intact. He knows where he is.
How do I help him. He is only on an antipsychotic at the moment. Mood stabilizers did not help. He is not on any dementia meds.
I would want a team of geriatric doctors looking at his metabolism, behavior , brain imaging and blood chemistry to get an accuate diagnosis .
You might think about whether he's got a bladder infection that never cleared.
Hoping some of our more nedically astute folks will be along soon.
When he becomes violent, do you call 911 to have him transported to the ER?
What I do not understand is why he can go several days with no symptoms and then has a bad day. I thought with dementia it was continuous.
A note on form: You may not be familiar with this site yet, but we now have a nifty feature where you can edit your post for about 10 mins after you submit. This way, you can add to your post without creating extra new posts.
See All Answers