My 87 year old mother had been living in an AL for 3 years when she fell in the bathroom and broke her femur. She was transported to the hospital where she turned into someone I couldn’t recognize. She was agitated, belligerent and her speech made no sense. It sounded like gibberish. No sentences and no comprehensible words. Now when she fell, of course, no one was around, but was found with a scrap on her head probably due to either hitting the wall in front of her or the floor. Anyone experience this?
Hospitalization is very hard on folks with dementia; they (and others) can suffer from "hospital delerium".
Has you mother had a CAT or MRI to rule out a stroke as the cause of the fall?
Has her femur been repaired? Anesthesia is REALLY hard on the elderly brain.
Is she on any new meds thst might be causing side effects?
That's my unscientific take on some of the things that could be going on.
What do her doctors say about her symptoms?
Anyway, that said, I've seen behavior like your mom's a few times with my own parents after a hospitalization (admittance for a few days); it's known as hospital delirium which was NOT caused by 'medicines' given to my mother, since there was only an antibiotic administered to her for pneumonia. At that time, she had mid-moderate dementia at play which wasn't too bad; she was perfectly functional, talking normally, living in regular AL, cooking/cleaning her apt like she always did, etc. During the hospitalization for pneumonia, she turned into another person entirely, like Linda Blair in the Exorcist almost. She was seeing mice crawling on the floor (which weren't there), she was trying to pack her belongings into the sleeve the utensils come in on the food tray, yammering gibberish and making NO sense at all! I was alarmed, to say the least. The RN told me all about hospital delirium at that time, and that's when I learned about it. She went off to rehab with that delirium intact and it stayed with her for the duration of her 3 week stay!
When she came out of rehab, we had to transfer her into Memory Care and after about 2 weeks, she was back to pretty much her old self again. Her dementia had taken a turn for the worse, though, and she had become wheelchair bound during the hospital/rehab stint (due to advanced neuropathy and 40 falls), but every time an elder goes to the hospital, imo, they DO take a decline they don't seem to fully recover from, esp at an advanced age (she was 92 at the time).
If your mom had a CT scan and it was determined she didn't have a stroke or other head damage from the fall, I'd just give her time to recover from the trauma of the hospitalization AND from rehab (providing her UA is negative). Don't expect any miraculous recovery until she's released. And, it's a tricky thing about taking her off the pain killers cold turkey; why would they do that? Is she now expected to have NO pain whatsoever while in REHAB, for petesake? She'll be getting PT & OT which is no joyride with a broken/healing femur, so I'd speak to the attending physician at the SNF to get his/her feedback on that matter. I have a big mouth and I suggest you develop one yourself if you don't already have one :) It's needed for our loved ones these days, unfortunately. Otherwise, they seem to get the bum's rush imo.
Wishing you the best of luck!!