Hi, I'm 37 and currently taking care of my 76 yr old dear mother who recently was diagnosed with Dementia. She started Olanzapine 5MG back in January and that medication didn't help with her dementia behavior like restlessness, obsessively going up and down the stairs, and just wanting to go outside numerous times a day. She just won't get tired, so her doctor psychiatrist increased the Olanzapine to 10MG a day. That didn't help either. So I took her to another doctor yesterday, this time to a geriatric psychiatrist and he put her on 0.5 MG of Lorazepam twice a day on top of her Olanzapine 10MG a day. Tomorrow she will start Lorazepam. My mom eats well and has no issue with walking, etc. but she is so obsessive about going outside and the stairs and just won't sit down for a good 5 min, and now she even has hand tremors. Her recent blood work all turned out great. My question is, did any of you try a good calming medication that is suitable for the elderly? I feel like I went to so many doctors and each have their own opinion and medication and I'm going crazy.
Many years before she passed, her mind just began racing like crazy. It was like she had sudden onset ADD. All over the place. Became obsessed with going to doctors and looking for anything to make her feel better. She’d had shingles, so she was on valtrex and lyrica for last 7 years. Meds for chemo related nausea...copd meds...muscle relaxers, etc...taking all those meds just created more problems. She tried antidepressants and those gave her colitis. Tried anti-anxiety to calm her thoughts and stop her fretting and wanting to see doctors. No avail. The only thing that sorta helped was cbd. She’d just be content for a little while, but it didn’t make her wobbly or high like all the “prescriptions”. Also, towards the last month of her life, we decided to allocate worry time and content time. I’d care for her during the day, call docs, eat, do meds. Then when I left, she was supposed to turn her “busyness “ off, and just be. Again, sometimes helpful, but not consistently so. Let me tell ya, my moms brain would wear out my mental energy in about an hour! Just constant questions, things she had to do (even during the beginning of the pandemic, she’d drive herself to the Walgreens-daily!) it’s exhausting and frustrating, bc they can’t just enjoy what is. I hope you find answers, but I’d look for strategies before prescriptions bc the prescriptions all come with something like dangerous interactions or making them unsteady both mentally and physically. I think docs just get tired of hearing their constant complaints so they prescribe stuff without thinking of the ramifications, like accidental overdose and the like.
Olanzapine is used for schizophrenia or bipolar disorders........why is she taking that? Lorazepam is Ativan and used for anxiety. OCD behaviors are common with dementia.......as long as she's not harming herself or others, why are you medicating her to stop repetitive actions? Some dementia sufferers open and close doors repeatedly, pack and unpack the same bags all day long, walk the hallways, pace back and forth, rummage for hours thru drawers etc. I saw it all the time when I worked in a Memory Care Assisted Living community last year. The staff left the residents alone to their repetitive behaviors because it just goes along with the territory.
If you plan to care for your mother at home, learn all you can about dementia and watch Teepa Snow videos on YouTube, too. You may need to learn distraction techniques and behavioral modifications to rely on instead of meds. Structure is very important with dementia. A routine whereby she has activities, meals, hygiene, exercise and daily habits she can get used to. That may help her stop relying on only 2 things to keep herself occupied with. Maybe not...dementia is very tricky and very difficult to manage.
My mother has dementia and basically cannot tolerate ANY medications. Nothing works for many of the demented folks anyway, it's found, thru trial and error. Every single medication the doctor has prescribed for my mother has made her dementia dramatically worse, so it has to be discontinued. It's very frustrating, too.
Many folks have found that CBD oil works well for dementia. It didn't do squat for my mother, but hers had no THC in it which renders it pretty useless to begin with. Some swear by the Biomat mini.....infrared heating pad type thing with amethyst crystals. One poster here said it took his demented mom from being out of control to a pussy cat.
Wishing you the best of luck with a difficult situation