A month ago my grandpa, who is 86 years old, was living a very active and normal life. He got ill and started shivering one day so we took him to the hospital where he was admitted for 10 days and had various tests . All reports were negative and the doctors discharged him saying they have no grounds to keep him admitted. While in the hospital he started behaving weirdly .
He started hurling verbal abuses, refused IVs , had no knowledge of where he was , what was the time. Started talking about old people and old events that made no sense to us. It was discovered that he had been taking sleeping pills for the past 10 years and the sudden cessation of those had these effects on him.
Now he is back in our home. Barely eats anything. Drinks ample water. Can't stand without support and is aggressive and angry and abusive all the time. He says we have kidnapped him and that we want ransom from him. Once he asked me to take him out. I did on a wheelchair. Once outside the house he started screaming and shouting for help.
And wriggled down the wheelchair and started rolling on the ground. When asked why is he doing this he said he wanted to go away. When asked where? He replies thats his concern and that i bring him his car keys. He can barely stand.
He refuses medicines and has now resorted to doing things like sitting on his bed naked, throwing stuff at us, hitting us, verbally abusing us and blackmailing like i will divorce our grandma if we don't let him go.
His brain functions seem to work pretty good. He knows how the tv remote works, how much temperature to set the ir conditioner on etc etc. We are all very shaken nd disturbed by this turn of events.
What possible way is there for him to recover again? If not then i must ask how much more time does he have to life because seeing him like this is miserable for me and everyone in our family.
I can't help wondering (a) if the sleeping pills had become addictive for him and the cessation of them contributed to or caused his bizarre behavior, and/or (b) if something was missed in the hospital, as it appears that the original cause for concern was never resolved.
I think Jessie's right - there's still something going on that hasn't been D'x'ed.
I hope that it is something that can be managed. I know that you would not be able to continue to live this way. Such anger is hard to be around.
Some elderly people can get quite confused and disoriented while in the hospital but it usually passes to some degree once they're back in familiar surroundings.