Infections

"Urinary tract infection in the elderly or in people with Alzheimer's or other types of dementia can profoundly affect, not only their health, but can result in significant behavioral changes. It is always worth considering changes in behavior may be due to infections like a urinary infection or constipation etc" alzheimers.org

How very true.  My loved one has been significantly more of a behavior problem --- crawling around his room, dragging things out and disrupting the room.  I was there recently, and it looked as if someone had trashed the room -- things were strewn about.  When I talked with him, he told me he had pain in his feet, so I started to check his feet and legs.  He had severe cellulitis in his lower legs, so bad there were open and oozing sores.  I called this infection to the attention of staff and arranged to get him to the ER.  I think his decline in lucidity and increase in behavioral problems is the result of this infection.  And, yes, I can certainly wonder why the staff at the care facility had not noticed and taken care of this.  I have asked the nurse to check his legs frequently to make sure this does not happen again.  He was much more lucid after being on the antibiotic, although the lucidity is continuing to fluctuate and is not back to the level it was in January.