Hello,

My name is Chris and I'm 25 years old. My mom is Bipolar and she's currently in the hospital. This is her 14th stay in the hospital for Bipolar. She's in her early sixties.(I just realized that I don't know her exact age and I'm quite embarrassed) I'm her only family and we've become very close the past few years. She's been clean and sober for 25 years and she goes to AA.

My mom and dad got divorced about five years ago and this is her third hospitalization since their divorce. She's been in deep depression since the divorce other then the 'manic episodes'. I noticed it was getting pretty bad about a month ago. I called her doctor and made an appointment.. A few days before her appointment, it got so bad(she broke her toilet, threw away all chemicals/cleaners/soap, tore up some family photos, stabbing stuff with a knife, along with delusions and a lot of other strange behavior) that I convinced her to go to the hospital.

She went into the hospital voluntarily a little over two weeks ago and I am very scared now because she has gotten much worse and is currently on a 72 hour hold locked in a rubber room. In the past I seem to remember her hospital stays lasting a week or two and she'd come out noticeably better. It's been over two weeks now and this is by far the worst I've ever seen her in my life.

The first week-and-a-half I visited her everyday and didn't really seem to notice any change in her. It was pretty bad, but it was essentially the same stuff I'd seen every time in the past. Then she was moved to another hospital and I ended up not visiting her for two days. The first day I visited her there I was absolutely shocked. She didn't even recognize me and she ALWAYS has in the past. She was talking gibberish and I could just tell that something was very wrong and this was much worse/different than anything I'd seen in the past.

Since that day she has gotten even worse and has suddenly become violent. She has attacked nurses, spit on nurses and apparently she became so violent that they were forced to hold her down and inject her with tranquilizers and lock her in the safe room. She is very angry and she screams and curses a lot. She has NEVER been violent in the past in or out of the hospital and she never swears. She also flushed her upper dentures down the toilet and is now very embarrassed about it and covering her mouth with her hand.

I visited her today after they let her out of the safe room and she is totally insane(for lack of a better term) talking gibberish and screaming swear words. I could only handle maybe 5-10 minutes of seeing her like this and in that 5-10 minutes she had the fastest, most extreme mood swings that I'd ever seen in my life. She went from screaming every swear word imaginable at me and telling me to get out, to talking gibberish, to thanking me for visiting her back and forth in a matter of seconds.

I am absolutely overwhelmed by the past few days and I just don't know what to do. My biggest concern is that this is some form of dementia and not just her Bipolar. How can they tell though without an MRI/CT/PET/? that she won't allow to be done? Could this sudden extreme change still be 'just' her Bipolar? Has anyone had any experience with a situation similar to this one? What can I do? I feel like I'm losing my mom and I just can't handle it.

Thanks a lot for reading this.