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My husband chose the evening of Friday the 13th, with
Nova Scotia gearing up for a hurricane, to have his
first (and hopefully only) experience with
drug-induced dementia.  It was absolutely terrifying.

He had started on Amantadine (sp?) a week ago and I
had noticed over the week that he would occasionally
lose the thread of a conversation, but not badly.  And
he was so much better physically and was feeling so
well that we were glad he had been prescribed it.

However, by this fateful evening, he was acting very
strangely.  I came into the kitchen at one point and
he was chatting away  to the empty room (I think Shakespeare came into
the flow of mostly gibberish), wearing a tea cosy on
his head.  When I asked who he was talking to, he
replied "Why, to Annie.  Annie who sell the oranges".

Needless to say, the next morning was Saturday and his
specialist could not be reached.  I took away his
Amantadine and hid them.  Saturday was very stressful.
 Iain was very sweet as always, never violent or
upset, but very "wired" and needed constant watching.
His conversation was almost totally gibberish.  He saw
people who weren't there and "remembered" things that
never happened.

He is much better today - almost back to normal.  He
says that even now he can not distinguish between
events which did happen yesterday and those which did
not.  His hallucinations were that real.

My point in all of this is two fold:
1.  To let people know that this can happen
and
2.  to thank my luck stars that I had read about this
type of adverse drug reaction on this list and knew
what was happening and what to do.

So, this storm (in both senses of the word) seems to
have passed and life is back to normal (if life with
the roller-coaster ride of living with or being a PWP
can ever be called normal)

Thanks again, guys.
Barb Bates