My Aunt is 76 and has MS. She is wheelchair bound and has been taking 7.5 mg oxycodone multiple times a day for many years. She is clear headed most of the time but her doctor and I have noticed the onset of dementia. She recently has been having a problem with snakes crawling over her body. They are not always in the shapes of snakes but most of the time they are. She cannot see them, hear them, they don't bite her but they have a sort of magnetic or electrical charge to them. She has not been shocked by them but says that she almost was once. They really bug her. She spends the whole day trying to pull them off of her and putting them into a folded up t-shirt on her lap. When the t-shirt gets full she has me take it outside to shake them out and then wash then put it in the washing machine. She wishes they would go away but they seem to be getting worse. Her doctor sent her to a psychiatrist who has tried 3 different medicines but non of them work. Her neurologist has done a brain scan and found no differences from her scan last year. My aunt now is convinced that these snakes are something evil and wants to have an exorcism done. I am not sure what my next step is when that does not work. Any ideas?
I know that your aunt isn't taking morphine, but I'm wondering, as others have suggested, if the meds she is taking are now contributing to these delusions, even though she has been taking them a long time. Adjusting her pain meds seems a reasonable approach.
You have been very kind to shake and wash the snakes out of that t-shirt. I wonder if an exorcism might be useful along the same lines. My dearest friend had an exorcism of her very old house (she is a Protestant and her minister performed the ritual), and the spirits stopped bothering her teenage girls after that. (I'll not comment on exactly how or why that worked.) Perhaps a combination of a ritual to banish the snakes and a medication change to lessen the delusions would be useful.
I hope if I am ever in a similar condition a concerned nephew or other relative will be as good to me.
I admire you so much that you are able to play along with her. I know it keeps her calmer, but I know that you are weary of the snakes. This phase may pass on its own, but it would be nice if there were medications that would make the snakes go away quickly.