Is this dementia?

Hello community,

My mother is 75. She has been an insomniac and suffered from anxiety/PTSD her whole life. She was prescribed Pregabalin and was using it as sleep aid for three years.

Several months ago, she complained about a rash that was preventing her from sleeping because she was constantly itchy. As time went on, the rash became more and more torturous for her. Day after day I would hear her say she didn't get any sleep, and spends all day scratching herself. She also complained that the pregabalin was making her dizzy, brain foggy, and blurring her vision. I thought perhaps the pregabalin was also causing the rash. So I advised her to tell her doctor she wanted to taper off the pregabalin. Her doctor complied and advised a taper which I thought was not gradual enough, so I told my mom to double the length of each step in the taper. I told her to try valerian and melatonin as a sleep aid.

It just kept getting worse. The rash continued. The insomnia continued. The itchy torture escalated to the point she was saying she didn't want to live any more. She began having panic attacks, calling the suicide hotline, saying she can't eat or sit and had to constantly be moving.

One day she called me and said she was driving herself to the emergency room because she was afraid she was going to kill herself and did not want to become a ghost. Having been 51/50d myself many times, I was afraid if she showed up to the emergency room in her delirious state talking about suicide she would be trapped there. I told her to turn around and go home, and tell her doctor her symptoms: overwhelmed by dread and had gone along time without sleep. I assumed she would be prescribed benzos.

She was prescribed .5 mg of ativan twice daily, but was only taking one pill a day at night before bed. The ativan did allow her to sleep, but during the day her rash and panic attacks persisted. After a few weeks she was bumped up to 1mg twice a day but again was only taking one pill before bedtime with an occasional dose during the day. Eventually the rash went away, but the panic attacks persisted. The focus shifted from the rash to the management of what I thought was an episode of panic disorder. Was it pregabalin withdrawal? Did the ativan make it worse? In my mind it was a case of choosing the lesser of two evils: effects of not sleeping for long period of time vs. ativan dependence.

She continued to take ativan for three months, then switched klonopin. Then she was unmanageable. She wound up in the hospital, was prescribed anti-psychotics and did an abrupt taper off klonopin. She spent three weeks in the hospital.

I'm sitting next to her now. I can't have a conversation with her. She constantly has a look of confusion and terror on her face. She repeats the same words incessantly. She marches in place and stares at me, paces around in circles constantly. She is hunched over. Sometimes she sticks her tongue out of her mouth and makes strange noises and strange faces. She cannot be reasoned with, has paranoid delusions. I cannot get her to eat or drink water. The person that was my mother is not here any more.

It's so sad.