Originally Posted by
NeverLoseHope 
Hi everyone. I am new to this site, and thought it looked like a good place to realize that I am not alone, having an alcoholic parent (my mom). I would like to share my story to anyone who will listen.
My mom lost her mother before I was even born, which led to her becoming an alcoholic (it runs pretty heavily in her side of the family). She struggled from about 1993-1996, when she ended up joining AA and got sober for about 5 years. Then she started up again around 2001 and has been drinking heavily ever since. Last wednesday (today is Saturday), she called me and told me she dumped all of her alcohol down the drain and was going to quit. I was so happy for her, not knowing the consequences that can come from a heavy drinker quitting cold turkey. So thursday night I got a call from my dad saying my mom is in the ICU. Here's where I get worried...
So she is experiencing all sorts of odd things. She is talking so weird... just mumbling random thoughts. She keeps saying "who's day is it? Dr Robert day" (Robert is her dad). She seems very aggitated and keeps cussing more than she normally would, and saying she wants to kill the drs and nurses that are taking care of her. She has had nausea and was throwing up Wednesday and Thursday. Her blood pressure is up and she isn't sleeping well. From what I have researched online, these are all symptoms of pretty serious alcohol withdrawal.
I would just like to hear from some other ACOA who have gone through similar situations. How long does the mumbling, aggitation, and confusion last? I just want her to be better... hopefully this will be the final straw for her and she will join a group and be sober.
Thanks for much to anyone who read my story and can give me any insight!
There may not be a good answer to this one. When my Dad had the hospitalization that pretty much led to his death in 2010, he had some of the symptoms you describe, and his doctors decided it might be alcohol withdrawal. He was 90, and although increasingly frail in recent years, his mind was still fairly sharp most of the time... although that had also started to be spotty. There would be times when he seemed confused, but also times when he could still give you a detailed explanation of scientific work he had done 50 years ago.
Before he went to the hospital, he had been abstaining from booze for a week or two, of his own volition. My Dad wasn't a falling-down drinker, for most of his life, but he did drink quite a bit, and as he got older, would get drunk on smaller amounts of booze than in the past. He was clearly alcohol-dependent -- he'd sneak up in the middle of the night and make himself a Manhattan, etc. He became quite depressed after my mother died in 2008 (after her own 11-month ordeal of hospitalization, rehab, nursing care, and so on, which I've described at various times).
I'm still not sure exactly what caused his decline and death. He may have had a stroke at some point in his last few months, but I don't know. The important part was that basically there was nothing much I could do to change things, for a 90-year-old alcoholic -- one with whom I had a badly strained relationship in the first place. There's a lot of wreckage left over from that time, and I'm sorting it out with help from my ACA sponsor and my Mom's old shrink (who treated her for almost 50 years -- which is great, because that means he knows more about my life than I do!).
Most important, whatever happens, it is not your doing -- there isn't much you can do to change the outcome of things one way or the other. Good luck.
T