Help! Break Me Outta This Joint!

Pema and I went to visit my mom this afternoon. My original plan was to take her to the mall to purchase new panties and bras. The outside doors of the assisted care home are locked with alarms so the residents can't get out without someone's knowledge but they open with a simple button on the outside and a code that's listed by the door on the inside. After I pushed the button to enter and started to open the door, my mom surprised me by immediately pushing herself half way out the door in her wheelchair saying to me, "Get me out of here, they are holding me captive!" One of her caregivers came to the door and much to my mother's chagrin, I asked her to please push my mom to her room. My mom then said to me, "I see you're one of them!" Pema and I were each carrying a box with six quarts of organic pomegranate juice as she was running low and it's been working okay at lowering my mom's bad cholesterol a bit while working wonders at raising her good cholesterol a lot. As I started putting the juice away where we keep it stored in her room she told me not to put it away because she was moving out immediately. I responded by telling her that all of her other stuff was there so if she ended up moving we would just take everything out together and that made sense to her. She was very agitated and confused and told me that the care givers were being obstinate to her. I went out to talk with them and they told me that she had been very agitated all last night and that this had continued throughout the day. Some of what they described sounded pretty delusional. Her Alzheimer's medication had recently been increased so I figured she was having a reaction to it. She wasn't in the mood for shopping at the mall so we took her for a drive. After a bit we stopped for an ice cream cone at her favorite ice cream parlor, Shuberts, a place that she often took me, my brother and sister to as kids. We sat in the car as she eat her cone, enjoying the shade and breeze blowing in the window. I told my mom that I thought she was having a negative reaction to the increased dose of her medications and told her that I would called F., the woman who runs her care home and let her know--which I did and we both agreed that my mom needed to return to her previous lower dose immediately. When she finished her ice cream we went to Rite Aid and I bought her some new tweezers so she could get at her chin whiskers.

When we returned to the care home she was relaxed and we sat in front of the aquarium in the living room and visited for awhile before Pema and I left. She was calm when we left and I hope the intense agitation and confusion doesn't return. You know, one really can't be too careful with medications.