Anybody deal with a parent (90) who states, "Call the ambulance, I need to go to the hospital"?

Attention. EMTs arrive, they fuss over her, she goes to hospital. they fuss over her. She hopes she will be admitted, if so, fuss over her. She can stay in bed watch tv and have nurses and other medical personnel wait on her.

My 92-yr old mother is a retired RN and still has plenty of her mind left. This past year she insisted I take her to the ER for a pain high up on her right side. When asked if this could be constipation, she was insistent that it wasn't and indignent that I'd even suggest that (since she has IBS and not the constipation kind).

Several hours and some imaging later: diagnosis was constipation.

How can a seasoned nurse be fooled? Not to mention that her older sister went through the exact same thing last summer while we were all together visiting in FL. I think in some instances when someone is very elderly, they are worried that every little pain can be "The Big One Elizabeth" (Sandford and Son reference for you non-Boomers). And nurses just know "too much".

Attention, afraid to live, afraid to die. My mother was having panic attacks at night after her slight stroke, she was calling the EMT's three or four times a week, they started charging her $650 per ride, that ended that, it was a miracle, panic attacks stopped, although my brother and I used that as our open door to move her into AL.

Perhaps you should ask for a 72 hour psych hold evaluation and/or COVID testing. Maybe after that experience the hospital wouldn't seem like such a good place she wants to visit.

Some of use wish with ours that they actually ask to go to the hospital. We could then actually help them better with the wait of them having a really bad emergency to get them evaluated.

You might also tell her medicare has limited the number of visits to the ER unless she is unconscious. :-)

Tell her how much that ambulance ride is going to cost.

My mother did that. She had some things wrong with her but going to the ER was attention to her and probably she regarded it as a social life of sorts. One time she had a little red spot in the white of her eye and insisted she go even though it was clearly not an emergency and her nurse friend had said not to worry about it. No pain. We all sat around the ER hovering in attendance. Doctor saw her, said it was nothing and sent her home. She says, he was a nice young doctor but he never even touched me. Case closed. She just wanted the attention.

Pain? panic? Pain AND panic?
So hard to know...

If happening a lot.. I suppose I would do a few home tests & make a call to Emergency/Nurse on Call type service first?

I think certain heart issues & extreme BP can cause panic. I know low oxygen can.

BP monitor & those finger O2 monitors with heart rate could be handy.

I'd ask the Doctor what you could check at home, what is normal range for her & what evokes an ER visit.

Yes, there are old aged hypochondriacs. The caregiver has to have certain knowledge about assessing a medical situation. Hypochondriacs love hospitals. They suffer from " hospitalitis".

I haven't had to deal with it first hand, but a friend of mine did with her husband. He did have some health issues, but none of them were out of control or needed immediate attention when he would declare that he needed to go to the ER.
After spending all day in the ER complaining about how long everything as taking and completing a battery of tests, he would be released. It occurred at least once a month, usually every couple of weeks. He became known as a frequent flyer in the ER.

She thinks that he liked the extra attention he got there, or he just wanted a change of scenery for awhile. It got so common that she would go to the ER with him, help him get checked in, make sure they had her contact information and then leave. If she stayed there, she would just have to listen to his incessant complaining and he would get nasty to her. The hospital or her husband would call her when he was discharged.

There were maybe 2 or 3 instances where he had a legitimate medical reason to go there.
Edit to add - I should state that her husband was in his 70's and didn't have dementia, so it may not apply to your situation.

What happened with the hospice evaluation? Hospice avoids these unnecessary trips to the ER and makes life much easier for all involved.