Hi all, I’m here again asking another question. So many from me these days! My 79-yr old father had a severe fall about 10 days ago. We don’t know how it happened. He was alone and doesn’t remember the incident. He hit his temple area and required stitches and also fractured a number of ribs. Before this he had been suffering from UTIs for about 8 months and had lost weight / become more frail. I had noticed general forgetfulness over the last few years but it didn’t seem like anything serious. Perhaps I should have taken it more seriously as his mother had Alzheimer’s. In any case he went to the hospital after the fall for about 8 days and recovered well physically. Mentally, it was another story. It was like he went into the hospital one person and came out another. He makes up stories about things, rambles on. He also started getting up from his bed in the middle of the night, wandering in the hospital. He is now in a rehab unit getting PT. The rehab unit is also for mental care patients. I’m trying to get him a neurological evaluation. I guess my question is, can a fall really trigger dementia in this way? Can it go from 0 to 60 that fast?
We hoped it was a UTI or something we could fix. But it wasn't. He's in memory care now.
If you get a choice, try to get a memory care facility that feeds into a good nursing home. Getting into a good nursing home takes some planning. Unless you have lots of money, you don't just walk in.
UTIs can cause severe and sudden behavioral changes in elders. So can imbalanced electrolytes.
You need to make sure that the rehab docs and PAs know that this is a change in mental staus for your dad. That always needs to he investigated. Remember that they didn't know him before.
I know that my LO went downhill pretty fast after she fell and fractured her wrist. She was never able to explain how it happened and within a few weeks, her Primary diagnosed her with significant dementia. Before this, she had been maintaining her own household. I later found out that she had been having some struggles before and since the incident, but, it really got bad afterwards. Once we got more eyes on her, we were able to see that she had INCREDIBLY poor balance. She would fall down for no reason, except poor balance. It wasn't like she tripped on something. The poor balance was likely due to her dementia. Her MRI showed multiple strokes.
Was he checked for a stroke that could have caused the fall. Was he checked for a concusion or brain bleed?
I decided to bring her home instead. 2 weeks after I had her home, she was basically back to herself. Chatty as always and we had to go through weeks to train her to just go in her diaper. She would hold it and yell at me to take her to the toilet.
For grandma, the problem was rehab. I don't know if it was the environment or maybe medication, but something was making her not herself. Once she was out of that environment and back on her normal meds, she was back to herself.
This is not to say your dads dementia is not caused by a TBI you do not know what happened to him this time or 5, 10, 15, 20 or more years ago.
There are some TBI's that can accelerate dementia that was in progress already.
Getting a proper diagnosis is important. And if he is a Veteran possibly get the VA involved as this also could be a result of military service.
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