This picture is one of the many times I had to take her to the E.R., or a walk-in Clinic for an urgent round of antibiotics for a UTI!
My first experience with Mom having a UTI was in June of 2023! Since Jeff and I were in the midst of a huge construction project at our home to make room for Mom fulltime, we rented a house across the street for me and Mom to stay in while the construction was going on. Our construction project was to raise the floor in our built-in garage to make a suite for Mom and to build a separate Garage/Storage Building. We didn't want Mom to have to deal with all of the dust, noise and confusion of people coming in and out of the house during this process!
The morning started as usual with us having coffee and a strawberry cream cheese toaster strudel (Mom's favorite!) After breakfast, I went into the room I had set up as a crafting space to do some cardmaking. I had been in there just a few minutes when Mom walked in and accused me of talking about her with Jeff through speakers in the ceiling. Jeff wasn't even in the rental house at the time! She was absolutely delusional! I tried walking away since I couldn't convince her that she was imagining this! She followed me to every room I walked in and still was insisting she could hear voices in the ceiling and we were talking about her. I didn't handle it well. This was all so new to me and I couldn't wrap my head around what was happening. After following me to my bedroom, she even pointed at my C-Pap Machine insisting that it was a speaker. Because she had been convinced that it was Jeff that I was talking to through all of the imaginary speakers, I advised him not to come over. It was a Saturday and I knew I couldn't get her to her Doctor's office in Lebanon until Monday. I felt so trapped in that house with her being so angry and delusional! I had to be there with her and I didn't want Jeff to come over so there I was with her and her delusions! I was having trouble getting her to eat later that day and all of the sudden she said she felt she could eat a peanut butter sandwich. I loaded her into the car and drove to the Dollar Store to get some peanut butter and fresh bread. I was so thankful that she was going to eat something finally. As soon as we got home I made her a sandwich and then things got even crazier!!!! Instead of eating the sandwich, she carried it into the bathroom and left it on the counter. I could hear her talking to someone there through the bathroom closet. She kept opening and closing the door and yelling up into the ceiling of the closet. Before the night was over, she had made up an entire scenerio of my son Trent (who lived in Hawaii) being in the ceiling with the D.A. The D.A. was trying to help negotiate for him to keep him out of trouble. She had left the sandwich in the bathroom for them so they could come out of the attic. Later during that sleepless night, she had brought a blanket and pillows into the spare bedroom so they could come down later than night. She also put the sandwich into the spare bedroom and took an empty jar in there in case they needed to use the bathroom when they came down. I could go on for days with the crazy stuff that she came up with. I finally ended up taking her to the ER as talking to others that had been through this had convinced me that she had a UTI. It took a few days for the medication to work and for her to finally get some sleep and get back to our usual new normal and out of this extreme craziness!
During Mom's time with me we went through many, many UTIs! She usually would start with hallucinations and I would know that it was time to get her some antibiotics. For her, when she had a UTI, she would not sleep so the crazy would go on and on for days at a time. I can't tell you how difficult that was as a caregiver to be dealing with that and not be able to get any rest! Her doctor finally put her on a low dose antibiotic fulltime to try to prevent them.
