What do you do when your mother's doctor refuses to give her pain medicine because it might cause constipation and dementia?

Constipation can be dealt with by giving her magnesium. It flushes through the bowels so you want to give more then needed. If you take with zinc it will help you produce melatonin naturally and you can sleep good.

Don't listen to the hype about magnesium overload, it is not true. Doctors know that you will end up in there office because of a deficit and then you can be a regularly scheduled patient.

Have you checked into alkalizing her system with foods? It can help relieve a lot of pain.

Find a rheumatology doctor that understands how to treat this.

There are other ways such as CBC and new research going on all the time. Go to another Doctor and do your own research, I discovered giving my Dad pain pills for his RA with Keifer kept his stomach and bowel working normally.
I wish you Luck

RA is very painful and OTC meds will not be adequate to control the pain. The medical community have cut back on meds due to the opiod crisis, and doctors are afraid to prescribe them, however it is causing those with legitamate pain such as cancer and chronic pain such as RA to not get the meds needed to control thier pain.

I would suggest getting a second opinion for your mother.

It will cause constipation, so more pain. Try going with over the counter meds.