June, I can imagine this must cause an awful lot of emotional pain for her
daughters.   How sad this is.

Every patient is different, every family is different, and every doctor has
their own way of handling these things.   I am fortunate to live in a place,
and to have a doctor who placed great stock in the peace and emotional well
being of both my mother in law and her only child, my husband.  (not to
mention me, who was living in close proximity to them both!)

We had problems with delusions too.  My mother in law imagined all sorts of
stuff.   Our doctor heard us when we told him that since she had a terminal
illness that would rob her of all function ultimately, that we wanted her to
be as "happy as a clam" if there was any such thing as the pharmaceutical
means to do that, for whatever time she had left, that we wanted to make her
life as happy and trouble free as possible.   Now remember she was depressed
and imagining all kinds of things that were very upsetting to her and to us.

He put her on Zoloft at first, and increased the dosage commensurately as it
began to lose effect with the passage of time and the worsening of her
illness.   When that didn't work anymore he put her on an anti-psychotic
which helped her enormously.   If it wasn't for the medications, I could
never have handled caring for her.  She was in a very bad emotional space,
and suddenly she was happy and peaceful.

Now this may sound like it was a miracle, but it really was a tradeoff,
because every drug has its side effects.   The trick is to know what they
are, and adjust accordingly.   As her illness took its toll, we actually
reduced her medication more and more to the point where she was taking only
a very small dose of Zoloft during the last few months (under full doctors
supervision of the whole process).

The reason for this is that these drugs may reduce hallucinations and
delusions, but they also take a toll on the persons mobility and balance and
they may cause them to experience more incontinence.   In my mother in laws
case they increased her craving for sweets and raised her blood sugars to
diabetic levels, which caused her to have to urinate every few minutes,
especially all night long :-(

So your family needs to maybe discuss these things with the doctor handling
her case, and weigh the drawbacks against the possible benefits.

Hey, it was the right answer for us, but may not be for your mother in law
and her situation.

It's great that she has lived to 101, but so unfortunate that her hallucinations
are so bad. I don't suppose that there's much that can be done short of
medication and dealing with it as best you can.
-steve

Talk to her doctor about trying a different prescription or
changing the dosage.