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My 100 year old mother was admitted to the hospital with sepsis, aspiration pneumonia, and kidney injury. She's been on IV fluids with IV antibiotics until yesterday when all her numbers had returned to normal regarding her white cell blood count and kidney function. They then switched her to oral antibiotics and took her off the IV fluides. The pnuemonia is still very much the main concern. The cough is constant and makes it difficult for her to rest. Through yesterday they were giving her a cough syrup that had a narcotic in it which seemed to help. But suddenly yesterday and last night she started getting very agitated, fidgeting and seeing things that weren't there, would say things that made no sense, and didn't recognize me. She does have dementia but yesterday she was totally not herself. She's had very little quality of life for the past year and a half. Now my main concern is that if she comes through this, will her quality of life be even less? And how long will she possibly last, going back to a skilled nursing facility where she'll most likely have something like this happen again.

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ive read a lot on this website about delirium. during a hospital stay. I was reading from an article that I found(this website), that someone else posted the link. it talked about delirium and also pneumonia. my mom had pneumonia (88 has Alzheimers)...and was treated as an out patient in urgent care. her insurance would not admit her. I had to take her to urgent care 3 days in row (?) and it took a lot of hours. but now after reading about delirium maybe the urgent care wasn't a bad route. (just in my moms case) here is the link. and maybe im not supposed to post. I guess it can get removed if its wrong to do. page 22 has some info. its long, but interesting(I read the entire thing) I cant get the link to copy. it is avoidablecare.org. Search for the article. "A Caregiver’s Guide to Advanced Dementia"
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Being in the hospital can cause delerium. But so can a UTI. I'd get that checked out right away.

At some point, aspiration pneumonia keeps repeating and you might consider calling hospice to make her comfortable.
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I agree that pneumonia can cause these problems but I would question the cough syrup since the problem seem to happen after they started using it.

Its hard to say if her quality of life will worsen. Some of the elderly bounce back. Pneumonia is very serious in the elderly. You will just have to see.
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