On Mon 05 Jan, Donna A. Bassolino wrote:
> Well my dad is no better on the Mirapex -he is now dizzy almost
> constantly.
> So we went from a miracle drug to almost back to where we were before
> on the Sinemet. (Although that was a nightmare !)
>
> It seemed he was doing good somewhere in the middle - but the Neuro
> insists he HAS to be on the higher dose - or there is no point being on
> it at all.
>
Donna mentioned something which has been on my mind for some time in her
last post when she said 'so we went from a miracle drug to almost back to
where we were before.....'
Who called it a miracle drug? I'm sure that the manufacturers
would not dare to make such a claim. After all, what does Mirapex have
that the other agonists don't have? As far as I know, only one thing: it
is the first non-ergot based agonist. Now we all know that ergot is a
highly toxic substance, but no-one believes that the final products of
those ergot-derived drugs carry any toxic content when they get to us,
surely.
If you think about it, Mirapex does have one overwhelming advantage, and
that is the sheer brilliance of the ad-man who called it Mirapex! Every
time I hear or see the name I get a fleeting, maybe even subliminal flash
of 'Miracle pex', and it is entirely undeserved. The concensus on this
list (it seems to me) is that quite a sizeable body of evidence is
building up against Mirapex - larger than normal, that is. Or maybe
the 'magic of the name' led to a lot of people jumping in with altogether
too high an expectation of miracle results, and now they are returning
sadder and wiser.
The attitude of your father's neuro is beyond belief. The only thing that
you can do when a person clings desperately to the theory when the facts
are pointing in another direction, is look for someone else to do the job.
I an sorry to have to say it, but the rate at which the symptoms are
developing does seem to be quite high, and this makes it difficult,
because the required effefctive dose of drugs will be increasing as
he gets worse. It's a moving target. You may have given your father's
dosages before, but I do not have them. I would suggest though that the
best mix of Sinemet and whichever of the agonists you choose is achieved
when the total daily intake of levodopa (the larger of the two numbers in
the drug name) is between 800 and 1000 milligm per day. It should be
possible to build up a baseline procedure with the sinemet to see if
anything happens (and I boubt if anything will,) and then you start to
introduce the agonist. And you keep on increasing it until something
happens or you crash into the maximum safe dose reccommended for that
agonist. Good luck to your father.
Regards,
--
Brian Collins <[log in to unmask]>.
