Things were upbeat at the end of August -- Mom was actually doing quite a bit better after stopping the Exelon patch. The patch somehow made some of her symptoms worse, particularly social withdrawal and some of the compulsive behavior (staring, cleaning). Her doctor was talking about starting her on an SSRI, for which I'm eager; I've heard many FLD patients do much better on these drugs, and I'm not sure why they haven't put her on one yet.
Anyway. Saturday she fell and broke her arm. It's her second bad fall; the first, about a year and a half ago, broke her wrist in three places and brought on her major FLD symptoms. (Maybe the anesthesia - ? I hear plenty of folks are diagnosed after a trauma. Did anyone else have this experience?). She's depressed now, and upset, and so is Dad, of course. Both times she fell off her bike. Why she was again on a bike this time, I do not know. Perhaps she seemed so much more like her old self that she and Dad wanted to get out and enjoy life again as they used too. It's just too damn hard to admit to ourselves that those days are gone.
My Mom had been hit on the head and fell hard, we were told later, when she was walking across the hospital parking lot where she worked. It was a parking lot beam, the kind that hits hard. She also had two major back surgeries only 2 years apart. I, too, have wondered about whether the anesthesia messed with her in some way. After her second surgery, and I went to go stay with her for a week, she seemed to pick fights and was very, very argumentative, not at all like her usual self, but we just figured it was her stress or her recovery from the surgery that was making her act that way.
ReplyDeleteMom was put on the SSRI Cymbalta. The doc said he found it had the fewest side effects. We had to increase the dosage after about a year, but it seemed to help her compulsive (cleaning, too!) behaviors and her constant pacing and following of others. It didn't wipe the behaviors out completely, but made her calmer in general.
Thanks, DeeDee -- I will mention the Cymbalta to my dad (I'm not the primary caregiver, which can be even more worrying sometimes). I did read somewhere that trauma can bring on the symptoms. Whether it causes them, I'm not sure. My mom's doctor said anaesthesia can bring symptoms "to the fore." Scary, no?
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