Oh, and I just remembered this. My grandmother suffered from sundowners. She HATED being hospitalized because of it. She had to be an impatient for a minimum of 8 weeks when she was dx with cancer. We went over her symptoms with her oncologist, and he Rx her Halidol. All's well the first week.

The second week, I get a call in the middle of the night, she was in other patience rooms confused. I go in to calm her down 2am and ask about her meds. Halidol is a chemical restraint they were hesitant to give it to her. I told them "tonight you get confused, tomorrow she's going to be combative, and two days from now she's going to be ripping IV's out of other patients."

Weeks 2 and 3 go by. Week 4 I come in and she's ripped the line out that they've been using to give her chemo in. Now this is a heavy duty line, not a stint, that got infected and had to be removed, this was a heavy duty line. Because of the cancer and blood thinners etc, they were having a hard time getting the bleeding to stop. Again, 3 days without the Halidol.

This time I talked to the head nurse, she's a danger to herself and others without the meds. I told her if they keep withholding the meds, she's going to be in someone else's room soon and rip their IV's etc out, she'd done it the last time she'd been hospitalized. We (the family) had to sign a release and demand that she get the Halidol each and every night.