89 year old father.
Any advice or suggestions?
My dad is turning 89 next month. The last 6 weeks he has been seeing people in his house that are not there. Last night he called me scared to death. They had him cornered in his bedroom and were giving him some type of medicine through the ceiling fan. I finally talked him out of calling 911, and my brother was there in 15 minutes to pick him up to go to his house. He had 20 people on his driveway yesterday trying to dig ditches in his yard. This seems to happen different times throughout the day. Most hallucinations are between 8pm and 6am but not uncommon for him to see people during the middle of the day. My brother was up every hour last night because my dad thought the house was on fire. The people were also sawing a hole in the ceiling. He got mad because my brother couldn’t see the people.
He has already called 911 twice over the last 6 weeks. Of course, the people disappear when the sheriff arrives at 4am in the morning. (Yes, I have called the crisis team at the sheriff’s office and let them know the situation.) My dad refuses to leave the house because he is afraid these people are trying to take his house from him. He only left last night because he was scared and walking around the house with a baseball bat. (We have taken all the guns out of his house which has made him mad and feel unsafe.)
He has been to the hospital, two eye specialists, neurologist, primary care, etc. The first neurologist ruled out dementia. We have seen them all and nothing has been found. Primary doctor started him on Seroquel on Friday and we go back to visit tomorrow. We are going to a new neurologist, but that takes months for an appointment. The interesting fact is that his memory is sharp as a tack. He can remember a conversation from 5 mins ago, 1 day ago, and 30 years ago. He just truly believes these people are in his house and tells my brother and me that we don’t know what we are talking about when we try to explain the situation.
Here are my questions…
1)How can I make someone leave their house that refuses to go? He has never wanted to go to an assisted living facility.
I really want to avoid getting him admitted to hospital for psych eval but is that the next logical step? (We will ask the primary care doctor tomorrow.) He has great insurance so I would prefer to take a path that insurance will pay for instead of taking a path that will burn all his money in months.
Any advice on next steps? (I have to assume we don’t find medicine that will help his situation.)
Additional point - He has had 3 UTI tests within the last 6 weeks and all have been negative. Hoping it would. E something that easy. All blood work has not found any issues.