S/O -- surgery for elderly -- any way to avoid or mitigate delirium?

[Anonymous]

My 81 year old mom is scheduled for a minimally invasive laminectomy next week at Medstar Georgetown. She absolutely has to have this surgery because she is in unbearable chronic pain due to spinal stenosis. She has extremely limited mobility because of it. She also has Type 2 diabetes and comes from a long-lived family, so her choices are to have this surgery or potentially live another decade in chronic pain.

I'm terrified of the possibility (likelihood?) of post-surgery delirium and mental decline in addition to the physical recovery challenges. She's already starting to lose it a bit mentally, likely due to a combination of age and the experience of living with unremitting chronic pain, and I'm worried what the general anesthesia will do.

Are there any best practices, resources, and/or tips and tricks that you've gathered from your own experiences on anything we can do (or advocate for) to avoid or mitigate the impacts of potential post-surgery delirium? TIA.

[Anonymous]

We went through this with a younger parent and it was rough. Can you afford to have an experienced CNA come for a few days/weeks?

[Anonymous]

I’d suggest you get her back home as quickly as possible and try to have at least one person she knows with her all the time until then. Hospital induced psychosis is a real thing. I’ve also seen preposterously incompetent medical personnel propose antipsychotics to treat mental status changes that were the symptom of an infection.

[Anonymous]

^^ this is it. No way to avoid it, just get out of the hospital ASAP. With MIL, she never came out of it. FIL was back to himself within 10 days/2 weeks