Well, we are back from our ordeal. Ted was released Wednesday morning and we flew home Thursday. We just barely made it back by the hardest -- a twelve hour trip with two changes -- pretty pooped out, to say the least. The attending physician in Mental Health in the hospital there was quite nice and spent a lot of time with us on Wednesday. He explained why they had put Ted in the psych ward until they got things under control and they had offered on Tuesday to move him to a regular medical ward. At least that's something positive. I'm not sure if this had anything to do with his sister showing up on Tuesday morning or not and me coming on Wednesday, but at least they tried to explain the situation. The psychiatrist also said that when he first saw Ted he was acting like someone who was experiencing way too much dopamine stimulation and he seemed to agree with us that this was a problem with medications. Unfortunate that the neuro there pulled him off Tasmar cold turkey but it is a done deal now. They also were giving him his Parkinson's meds at 8 a.m., 12 noon, and 5 p.m. -- when they remembered to give them at all. How is that for evenly spaced timing????? Not to mention the fact that they had no Mirapex in their pharmacy and had to wait until someone could get some there from the hotel which was Monday evening, I think. So, at best, he was getting his meds hit and miss for first few days of this.

So we get back home Thursday night and go in to see the neuro here on Friday morning. He just couldn't understand what happened. He wouldn't discuss the possibility of either overmedication or dopaminomimetic psychosis at all. He did take him off the Mellaril and put him on Risperdal b.i.d. -- plus continue Sinemet CR 50/200 t.i.d. and Mirapex 1.5. mg. t.i.d. And he said he wanted to check him IN A MONTH. I'll tell you, at this point in time nothing should surprise me. It's just that if I had a patient that had been through what Ted has, I'd be checking him in a week to ten days at the max. Unfortunately, our choice of neurologists is extremely limited. His old neuro was much better but moved out of the country and sold his practice to this one. And the first neuro we saw here had little patience or understanding. He is the one who told Ted that eating the sprouted fava beans (which we were experimenting with at the time) could kill him!!! The neuro had a resident or intern in the room with him that day and Ted said it was all the young doctor-to-be could do to keep from bursting out laughing at that remark. Anyway, we decided to move on to another neuro at that point.

Overall Ted is a lot better although has slowed way down with the medication changes and all the stress his body has been through. We are hoping to get rested and then see about getting an appointment at UC San Francisco's center of excellence. It's about a 4 hour drive one way but that is well within reason.