hi all
At 15:24 1999/02/17 -0800, shirley wrote, in part:
>my 83 year old mother has had pd 10 years and uses sinemet.
>The past several months she has been having hallucinations
>a side affect of this medication. How have you dealt with it?
> SHIRLEY
become her advocate
by learning as much as you can and by being extremely vigilant!
this could be the beginning of a potentially life-threatening
but mainly avoidable slippery slope downhill
after long term use of sinemet and other pd meds
the key challenge seems to be the 'fine-tuning' of the chemical 'cocktail'
'under-sinemetization' tends to result in pd symptoms 'showing through'
'over-sinemetization' tends to result in drug side effects
including dyskinesias and symptoms of psychosis
this 'fine-tuning' is critical to your mother's health
and should be sensitively addressed by her medicos
if not, she might need new medicos
in the meantime
take a look in the pd list archives on the wwweb at:
http://james.parkinsons.org.uk/
go to the search page and do a search using the criterion:
DRUG INDUCED PSYCHOSIS
if you can't access the wwweb
let me know and i will send you the relevant articles separately
janet
janet paterson - 51 now /41 dx /37 onset - almonte/ontario/canada
<http://www.newcountry.nu/pd/members/janet/index.htm>
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