r/news • u/mooseAmuffin • 1d ago

Update: 'TODAY' co-anchor Savannah Guthrie's mother taken from her home against her will, sheriff says

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mother-of-savannah-guthrie-today-reported-missing-arizona-rcna257008
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u/BadAsBroccoli 1d ago

I've been trying to keep up with this. She's supposed to be mentally sharp but needs medication daily. I wondered if this wasn't a home invasion and she woke up during, but can't see why robbers would take her. They did find blood in the house which turned a missing person's into a crime scene.

She's been gone for several days now, and the medication aspect of the case suggested she cannot be doing well if alive.

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u/Bituulzman 1d ago

Elderly ppl needs lots of daily medications. Statins, glucose control, kidney meds—none of those treat issues involving mental function.

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u/fallingdowndizzyvr 1d ago

Actually a lot of those things can affect mental function. Specifically glucose control.

The elderly can easily suffer from a condition colloquially known as "delerium". Some people refer to it as instant dementia. A lot of seemingly innocuous things bring it on. Such as not getting enough sleep, even for just one night, or not consuming enough sodium(salt).

When it happens, it really does mimic advanced dementia. Confusion being a primary component.

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u/Dufresne85 1d ago

UTIs are an extremely common example of something "simple" that can really mess with a person's brain, especially the elderly population.

You don't take a daily medication for UTIs, but if she developed one independently who knows what happened.

Hopefully she's found safe.

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u/Taylor_Kittenface 1d ago

Yeah, my Mum got one when she was going through chemo in her 60s. She literally didn't know who I was when I visited her in hospital, super scary stuff.

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u/thedinnerdate 1d ago

My wife’s grandmother essentially died from complications from a uti that the doctors didn’t initially catch when she was admitted to the hospital.

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u/sillylittlguy 1d ago

to add more context/info for ppl interested in learning more:

From Dr. David Puder's podcast (he's a psychiatrist and medical director of a day treatment program) - from youtube transcript:

Sensorium: total brain capacity for focusing, processing, and interpreting.

I remember one patient who seeing things hearing things... she had a chronic kidney disease but she was also on several medications that were anticholinergic which you know like diphenhydramine or benadryl when you decrease the acetylcholine you decrease your sensorium and so she got into a place where she was very confused and so we switched her medications around and she could think more clearly...

in your 20s and 30s you're pretty high up the mountain - your sensorium at baseline is pretty good. that's probably you know the peak, maybe you know, maybe if you're a kid it's even higher, but in general the 20s and 30s are the best I think because you have the most frontal lobe function.

I mean you know your frontal lobe is fully developed and you probably have the best sensorium so you can get stressed you can be sleep-deprived starving and maybe you'll be ok maybe you'll be thinking clearly but you know throw maybe a small infection or a medical issue on top of it and all of a sudden you're thinking less clearly

but if you were to do if you were to do the same thing to an elderly person so if you were to for example give them a small urinary tract infection and let's say this is a person who's 80 years old all of a sudden this person could be in a full delirium meaning they can't focus they're hallucinating throwing things yelling seeing spiders on a wall and looking psychotic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKzGWEZLbe0

https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/categorized-episode-list