Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Symptoms, Side-effects, Medications...Oh My!!!

So it was great seeing my parents again this past weekend.  My mom has her ups and downs with FTD...we seem to be in a slightly "down" time right now.  We spent Saturday at Kolache Fest with my in-laws.  It was so nice seeing some of my mom's friends who are all concerned about both my mom and my dad.

At mother's last neurology appointment, Dr. Schulz prescribed 250mg of Depakote.  Depakote is used to help FTD patients slow down just enough to think before they speak.  I think it is also supposed to slow her ADHD brain down just a little.  Anyway, Daddy was supposed to increase the dose by 250mg each week if her symptoms didn't improve.  She could have up to 1000mg per day.  The reason Daddy increased the medication from 500mg to 750mg was because he hadn't seen improvement in her ability to "put on the brakes" with her thought-to-mouth process.  It has done nothing to help...instead, we are thinking that it might be making her hallucinations/delusions worse.

She is visiting the guest house behind their home (where her mom lived while she was sick with Alzheimer's) to talk with her mom. She opened the front door to let her mom in her house. She sees one of their former employees all the time. She even drew a picture of him with a Sharpie on the sliding glass door.

So Daddy is making some notes in preparation to talk either with Dr. Schulz's nurse or Dr. Schulz himself about the medication and what could be causing the hallucinations/delusions.

On a better note, my mom's blood sugar and blook pressure are ideal according to the endocrinologist.  She just needs to kick up the exercise a bit.