Friday, March 4, 2011

John slept most of the night last night but was awake very early this morning and could not get comfortable. I have explained to him that I can no longer move him out to the sofa by myself because it is now a two man (or lady) job. So I just kept rolling him o)ver and he toughed it out until the help arrived at 9am. (He needs the special mattress but I understand,because it is a new product,  the company had to order it so it is not here yet
I got in touch with a nurse clinician at the Parkinson's clinic and she said to go ahead with the generic form of the Sinemet that the doctor had ordered so I went up to London Drugs and got the new pills today.
It is too early to know if they are making any difference.
John had a difficult evening, especially with the rigidity. I had to put him on the lift and reposition him into a sitting position in his chair at least 6 times. Once, by the time I got all the harness etc off him and pillows around him, he had already slipped down again and we had to start over. Don't know if that is the new meds not working well or just a bad day.
The good news today was that the extended medical finally got caught up on all the claims I have made for meds etc. so I am solvent once more. And I now have a person in the office to send further claims to, and I can e-mail her when I send them in and she will let me know when they arrive and personally see they are processed. So, after all that hassle, some good has come out of it.
Questions I have been asked:
Is our extended medical covering all the expense of the bed and mattress?/  Yes - 100%
Is John in pain when he is so stiff and rigid? Not really, When the muscles cramp - yes. But otherwise only when I try to bend his leg and it won't bend etc. then it hurts and I have to work on it and exercise it until it will bend a little bit. It's called breaking the rigidity.
What difference will the new meds make? Not really sure but the thinking is this. The Sinemet that John takes is actually a compound of two things, levodopa and carbidopa. The levodopa is what replaces the dopamine that John's body does not produce and controls the Parkinsons. The carbidopa controls the nausea which the levodopa causes. He was getting the usual dosage of 100 units of  carbodopa to 25 of carbidopa. The doctor thinks that because he is on such high doses of Sinemet because he needs that much levodopa, he may be getting too much carbidopa and that is causing some of the symptoms. So he has prescribed another Sinemet which has 100 units of the levodopa to only 10 of the carbidopa.
So now we wait and see if it indeed makes any difference, 
Tomorrow I am off to a seminar on Parkinson's for most of the day and the respite worker who comes on Tuesday afternoons will come and stay with John for that time.

One thumbs down for today.