Ever since my mom has an acute confusion episode, she has been mean and nasty. She told my sister that my brother and I are trying to kill her. Now my sister won't let us see her, what is wrong with my mother?

I can tell you right now that if you talk with someone at a Alheizmer's organization or elderly care institution that one of the most common and only symptoms of a UTI (urinary tract infection) is this confusion. Especially if it just came about sort of out of the blue...the doctors didn't find my mother's UTI until she was in the hospital and having the urine and blood cultured. For over a month, we saw 3 different doctors, had lab work, urinanalysis, etc. Even the home health care nurses didn't believe us, just 2 weeks after she was home from the hospital we thought it was happening again. (Ask for a straight cath so they won't think the specimen is contaminated.) She was having the hallucinations. She never ran a fever...for some reason they don't understand that...(but the people who work with the elderly do!) she never had burning or itching. She had one kidney pain that I knew of the whole time and it only lasted less than a minute and went away. I requested another culture from a straight cath. A week later the culture confirmed my suspicions. The doctor hadn't believed me again. It just happened again, for 2 weeks we knew she was sick again (she would say something really off the wall). They diagnosed her the previous hospital stay with temporal arteritis (inflammation of the arteries ot the brain) and put her on prednisone which seemed to help some then gave her meds to raise her blood pressure which was dropping when she stood up (I think it's related to the kidney function but I am not a doctor what do I know...). They were trying to figure out why she was anemic, why she had low sodium, why she was weak, why her blood pressure was dropping...they just found out with a blood culture that she had sepsisemia...sepsis...infection had reached her blood...a geriatric doctor may have been able to figure it out...she had all the symptoms of sepsis, except what they consider a fever...over 100F. Try talking to the hospital case worker who has your mother's best interests at heart or to someone on staff at a nursing home who may have dealt with this and hopefully someone will post to you on this board if they have dealt with this situation. Your relative probably means well and thinks she understands the situation better than you because she is medically trained...forgive her and try to restore the relationship and just continue to ask questions and pursue...for your mom's sake...

Did they do a cat scan? That could happen for many reasons but in my experience with my Mom, it happens from the hospital experiences alone and can happen with a cerebral hemmoage of the brain. Sounds like your sister is the POA , has spoken negatively against you all, and going to place your Mom in a Nursing home or someplace else? Good Luck.

You need to put a stick through the spokes of this wheel very quickly. You have a legal right to see your mother, learned this the hard way when the judge insisted the thieving sisters had every right...and "even a convicted murderer has the right to see his mother." Good grief.

Anyone with experience in dementia knows this is common behavior, even a phase. Could even be caused by the very drugs Rx'd to stop delusions (in our case Seroquel and Ativan). They backfired after awhile. There are so many causes of this paranoid behavior. Good luck. At least you are genuinely concerned.

"solicitors"...are you in Great Britain? Good to mention. Anyway, if your mother is not in her right mind when she changed the will, it probably won't stick. You could cross-accuse your sister of Financial Elder abuse, using the elder's demented state to swing matters to her own advantage. Arghhh. you have a problem. Good luck, both with bashing your sister across the head with common sense and legal notices...and with getting your mother stabilized.

Take copious notes, save emails, do calendar of your mother's behavior patterns, admissions to hospitals, drugs administered that you know of, etc.

I completely agree with Lorrie. UTI's are one of the most common reasons for 'odd' aggressive or unusual behavior in our elders!

For ALL of you still dealing with UTI's (urinary tract infections) or for those that want to prevent them, PLEASE do some research (like I did) on using D-mannose.

My mother suffered from recurring UTI's until we started using D-Mannose. Worth a look.

Definitely resole it right away don't let it go, talk to your mothers doctors and insist on getting answers, there are agencies for elder care and legal recourse in most cities through social services, I would definitely do research. I hope you find the answers you need.

Was a stroke ruled out? My husband had strokes and he would get like this when he had one.