 |
 |
At 10:14 7-8-98 +0800, you wrote: >Ida remarked on her astonishment that I use Sinemet to help me sleep, so in >the light of the current discussion I thought I'd better comment: >>- I do not use it to combat "wakefulness" but to loosen me up enough to get >comfortable enough to sleep >>- I do not use it every night, only when I have trouble sleeping because of >stiffness or when I'm pretty sure I am going to. >>- Like Brian Collins I only take half of my usual dose - and of course no >agonists etc. >>- again like Brian, I began the practice in my 10th year with PD and my >experience may have no relevence to people at an earlier stage. Brian >comments (and I agree with him): Dennis, When I was astonished about you taking sinemet to be able to sleep the object of my astonishment was the difference of the effects of sinemet on different PWP's from which I had concluded one can't recommend nothing to any other patient before knowing something about the reactions of that specific person. For me the effects of sinemet are contradictory to sleep, not always because I am too alert, but because I move or feel an urge to move(something that Charles Mewyer, I miss him too, called akathisia)and when its wearing off it causes a period of strong dyskinesia and dystonia. I can never sleep before I have gone through that. Before my pallidotomy that coould last for hours and it was so heavy that I had to lay on the ground to prevent falling. Now it lasts never more than one hour and is much less heavy, but still enough to keep me awake. My pallidotomy has also increased my sleep benefit, which for me does not feel like a combination of off and on and not like on(with sinemet), but getting up is really easy for me, though I know I have to hold on a bit or the muscles in my foot will cramp. I am typing this rather quickly while I am yet "clean" from sinemet. My neuro says it is really an effect of leva-dopa that the brain has been able to preserve and that the full blown Parkinson symptoms would only show up if I did not take sinemet for about two weeks, which he strongly advises me against. So my hate-love relation with leva dopa, a blessing and a poison, comtinues. I can only recommend something to other PWP's, as far as they recognise something of their own reactions in this. They should take their own symptoms serious, don't get confused when other paople say you can't have this symptoms because they don't exist. Ida -------------------------------------------------------------- Vriendelijke Groeten / Kind regards, Ida Kamphuis mailto: [log in to unmask]