My 88 year old mum is in hospital again - she has been living with heart failure and an irregular heartbeat since a long admission in the spring but she'd got back to living independently. I found her in bed a fortnight ago, barely concious and she was found to have a very low body temperature, UTI and multiple organ failure. Not expected to survive but she managed to turn it around. She is medically now much better but as the medical situation has improved, her brain seems to be misfiring. At times it is like she's had a personality transplant - she is normally intellectually quick, interested in politics, non-judgemental, tolerant and thoughtful. But at the moment she's a bit weird - not all the time, just at times. She's either hearing conversations and getting muddled or she's having auditory hallucinations - so far we've had - there's a train station outside, the hospital have rented the room next door out to a call centre, there was a children's party during the night. She also told my brother she has a sea view. The doctors are saying it's not delerium because when they assessed her during the day, she was orientated, knew she was in hospital, knew they were doctors etc but the other night she rang 999 in the middle of the night because she thought she was being burgled.
Anyone had any experience of this sort of intermittant thing? It's confusion but not really the "I don't know where I am or what I'm doing" confusion? She's only on diuretics and antibiotics at the moment, I guess it could be related to those drugs? Or has her brain been damaged - she was very low on oxygen when admitted.