Lady shows few other signs of dementia, if that is what this is, but several times lately she has awakened after an hour or so sleep and asked what we are doing "up there" and raised Cain all night. She can't tell me where we are exactly but she does not want to be there and I need to take her home, right now! Telling her repeatedly that we are at home and showing her her clothes, furniture, etc, does not make a dent. Usually she has snapped out of it by the next day but this time it has been 24 hours and she is still delusional. She has macular degeneration and is nearly blind which may have something to do with her inability to recognize the house she has lived in 50 years; though she has gone so far as to admit it is her house how did I get it up here? She has two daughters in the area and I am torn whether to inform them or not as she does not want her health discussed with them or others and I do not wish to betray that trust; but she is driving me to exhaustion. We were up all night with her railing at me and demanding to be taken home. Please, any advice is welcome! Robert
The rest is less so. Clearly something is going on. Do you have contact details for this lady's GP/primary care physician? If so, call him or her and report what has happened, especially explaining any changes you have observed. If you cannot contact her own doctor, call emergency medical services and seek advice.
If, after that, you are still anxious about not informing the lady's daughters about their mother, do your best to obtain her consent to your contacting them. If she refuses then it can't be helped - you'll have done your best.
Redirect her if you can. Get her attention on something else. I have a patient who can't understand why a nurse is coming to her house. She's not in her house, she's actually in a NH but trying to get her to believe this would only agitate her. This woman has a lot of beautiful clothes so when I see the agitation when I walk in I go to her closet and start bringing out some of her clothes, ooh'ing and ahh'ing over them and she tells me where she got them or if they were a gift I'll take that and run with it ("someone has good taste, who bought you this?"). This is usually enough to get her calm enough so I can evaluate her and move on. Redirecting takes a lot of energy on our parts but it's better than an agitated elderly person. Good luck! :-)
We were laughing almost every morning... I am missing her!
As others have stated, you do want to inform the daughters and she should be evaluated medically, but there is no point in arguing with her or trying to make her see reality; she is unable to follow a train of logic and having someone insist nothing has changed when she "knows" she's in a strange place will only agitate her. As frustrated as you are that she is out of touch with reality, understand that she is every bit as frustrated because *you* are out of touch with *her* reality.
This document may be of assistance to you in determining if there are other symptoms present that you may have overlooked and to get a more thorough understanding of what you are possibly dealing with:
website: smashwords/books/view/210580