Medical...

[SandyMM]

Is anyone familiar with a disease/syndrome possibly related to the elderly that sounds similar to Bent's, Bendt's, Bench's?

I am looking on the internet and have heard of something similar, but haven't found anything yet.

[Mellifluous]

See if it is on this list.

http://www.mic.ki.se/Diseases/Alphalist.html

[CarolU]

Do you know is this an infection disease or a condition? Do you know what part of the body is affected by the disease? That would narrow the search down.

[CarolU]

See if it is on this list.

http://www.mic.ki.se/Diseases/Alphalist.html

Wow Mel. That is SOME list! (eyes bugging out emoticon)

[Soltera]

Does it have something to do with mental confusion, poor memory, that sort of thing?

[SandyMM]

It is a possible side effect of morphine used on very elderly patients. My mother had an extreme reaction (violent, bizarre, paranoid behavior) to morphine (which nobody told us could be associated with her morphine meds) when she was in the hospital last spring for a hip revision surgery. I spoke to someone last night who had researched and written a paper on the effects of morphine on the very elderly. She had found an Alzheimer's connection and the Be**** connection.... I was not familiar with the terminology and didn't have time to get the correct spelling or details...

[Monty]

The one time ,my Mom was in the hospital - they gave her Vicodine(sp?) for pain from back injury - we caught it in the hosptial - she was having hallucinations. If we hadn't noticed what she was saying didn't make sense , they might have sent her home like that !
We think the hospital people just figured she was 91 and it was normal . They switched meds, and she was fine the next day !

[CarolU]

Penny, I had an experience very much like yours.

My mother was in her late 70's and in the hospital for heart problems. She was uneasy and up and down during the night. The nurses got PO'd at her for not staying in bed and gave her a drug to sedate her. The next morning she was confused and disoriented. The day nurses were giving me crap about her not being cognizant enough to live alone and I about exploded, she was talking stock options with me the day before! I called her doctor in and demanded to know what had happened to her. I thought she'd had some kind of stroke! He checked her chart and found the drug. I was really PO'd and took her out of that hospital. Grrrrrrr!

Anyway, that's no help Sandy. I tried looking it up on-line for you and they translate everything into regular English for the public to read. Maybe in an actual PDR it will still be in Medical language and we can see what it says. I have one here somewhere but need to go work horses for a bit.

[motorgypsy]

The same thing happened to my mom when she only about 40. Some drug she took after abdominal surgery to remove adhesions made her think the Japanese were going to take over the hospital so she got out of bed ripping open some of her stitches and went to find the hospital administrator to tell him about the impending takeover. It was extremely real to her and it took her a long time to get over it.

Any time a family member starts to act in an peculiar (different) manner we check medications immediately and it usually is a med that is causing the problem. Meds are life savers but since they are so powerful you never know what side effect they might have. Very scary. HOpe you find the solution soon.

[SandyMM]

We are dealing with large B-cell lymphoma in an 88 year old who may or may not tolerate the rest of her chemo. The cancer causes hypercalcemia which is what will get her if the chemo isn't successful.

[pasorider]

My husband had a reaction to Phenigran (sp ?) after an angiogram that was given for naucea. He ripped out his IV's, wouldn't stay in bed, was going to do laundry, now, this man has never done laundry in his life, so he really was hallucinating. He was upset that they were making him get a hunting license when he didn't hunt. Needless to say, I always tell every Dr. not to give that med. to him anymore.

[Soltera]

My grandmother had Demerol for some sort of procedure early in life, back in the 30's. Tooth extraction, I think. It gave her hallucinatory nightmares that haunted her ther rest of her life. The fear of having the same reaction to another drug also kept her from giong to the doctor as she should have. Lived to be 93 anyway, so I guess it worked out okay. Hope this helps.

[CarolU]

Sandy, I read through three pages of the PDR on morphine sulfate, injectable. I didn't find any side affect, symptom or disease that was like bend. Are you sure she wasn't saying "benign?"

They did list a precaution for elderly patients that it could cause increased intracraneal pressure.

[SandyMM]

They did list a precaution for elderly patients that it could cause increased intracraneal pressure
Thanks - that does make some sense to me.

My mom is 88 and had hip revision surgery about 6-8 months ago. She has always been slow to come out of anesthesia, but this time, after about two days when she should have been getting back to normal, she took a bad turn mentally and was paranoid, violent, argumentive, and seemed to hallucinate off and on...

I have heard that some medical journals have shown an increased incidence of the onset of Alzheimer's and this Be**** (whatever it is) after morphine use in very elderly patients.

I don't think she has been as sharp again as she was previous to that surgery. She has now been diagnosed with large B-cell Lymphoma which is actually quite treatable, but in her less than cooperative state of mind - she is not recovering as fast as the doctors would like in order to consider continuing her treatment... It's a Catch-22. She can't get better without the treatment and physical activity, but the drs are reconsidering whether or not she's capable of withstanding more treatment...

We are moving her to an assisted living facility Friday. I actually think she'll like it better than where she's been living - although not as big as her apartment - simply because there's more activity around and it will perk her up. hey - they've got Bingo twice a week - she'll be in heaven! ;-)

[motorgypsy]

I do know that anesthesia itself causes some brain damage. There were particularly problems with open heart surgery and some loss of mental capability following this procedure when it used to take a really long time with the patient being on bypass for quite a while. I saw it myself in a very sharp school administrator who had the surgery in the 80's. He did recover his mental abilities but it took some time.

I hope your mom improves really soon.

One thing you may have already done is run all her meds through an online interaction checker and include all over the counter stuff.

[CarolU]

I hope the affects wear off and she returns to her normal self. My sister is an RN and said it takes up to 72 hours to get all that out of your system.

I hope she likes the new facility. Maybe some books on CD or games to help get her back to her sharp mind.

Keep us informed. Hope she does well.

[PasoVicki]

Are you looking for something like this, Sandy?


http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jpm.2006.9.810

[SandyMM]

Thanks... That pretty much describes the ordeal we went through with her mentally.... Day 6 after surgery, I tried to replace her oxygen mask (w/o it her O2 level dropped to low 80s) and she went berserk screaming at the top of her lungs that I was a murderer and trying to kill her! It took 3 nurses and myself to restrain her and pry the shredded oxygen mask from her fingers.... This was less than a year ago when she was 87.

I'm still looking for the 'Be****' syndrome/disease/condition, but the Capgras Syndrome also fits her to a T. I need to do some more research.

[PasoVicki]

Apparently, there's a group of similar syndromes, sometimes called misidentification syndromes and sometimes called paranoid delusional syndroms. I didn't find one that begins with a "B" -- but you can find several descriptions here:

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/simplepsych/paranoia.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_misidentification_syndrome


http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psych/pcnp/1998/00000003/00000004/art00005


If you do a little digging, you might find what you're looking for. Hope this helps.