A Christmas hitch

The family party we hosted on Christmas Eve (to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary and the fact that S had reached 65 and I had my 70th during the year) went pretty well. Then we spent quality time with S's family (4 generations including her 3 mostly wonderful grandchildren) on Christmas day.

On Boxing Day, they were due to come and collect S to take her across to an old family friend who was having a party and I would have had time to myself to finish clearing up after the party, amongst other things. Then it turned out that S's 2 year-old granddaughter had chicken pox! After thinking it through and trying to check the facts, it seemed foolhardy to risk any further contact with the child whilst she was infectious. Dementia is hard enough without the added complication of shingles.  One consolation was that when I told S there was no indication that it bothered her.

She had of course been in contact during the previous two days so the decision to keep her at home and forego the time to myself was not entirely logical. Even worse, one of my online friends referred me to the NHS website where there is a categorical statement: 'It is not possible to catch shingles from someone else with the condition, or from someone with chickenpox.'  (Apparently the reason why the Herpes Zoster virus sometimes becomes re-activated and causes shingles is unknown.)

So the only risk would have been catching chicken pox again (S had had it as a child) and this is pretty unusual.

Anyway, we were able to enjoy the youngest granddaughter's birthday party on the 27th.  

It's certainly encouraging that several members of the family commented on S's increased awareness, from time to time, of what is going on around her and I believe this is probably due to the medication (Co-careldopa) that she has been prescribed for the Parkinson's symptoms.

Alzheimer's and Parkinson's - an update

The appointment was useful. I was impressed by the specialist. Prior to meeting us he did the usual speed-read of 'the notes' of course (just the notes since the diagnosis when my S was transferred to the care of the Adult Mental Health Team). He started by saying that the AMHT guy we see had noted that my wife has Lewy Bodies Disease (she hasn't - the diagnosis is Alzheimer's). When I queried this he said he thought it best to forget about labels - a man after my own heart.  (But I'll query this with the AMHT.)

He quickly identified that, as suspected, my wife has several Parkinsonism symptoms e.g. rigidity, 'cogwheel' unbending of arms. He thought on balance it was worth trying a very low dose (initially one 12.5/50mg tab a day) of Co-careldopa. I'd told him about my wife's extreme sensitivity towards many drugs. He said that because of the low dose and the short half-life of the drug (2-4 hours) any serious problem would be very unlikely but, obviously, we should stop taking it if there were any problems.

This dose may not produce any improvement but will show if the drug is tolerated and then the dose could be upped later. Someone once told me 'start low and start slow' is a good policy for most drugs you've not taken before.

So, I started today when nothing else is planned.  We have had a short walk so far, about 3/8ths mile.  It was about as good as it gets at the moment  -  we didn't have to stop at all. No adverse effects are apparent.

We will also get a visit from the 'falls team' who might be able to suggest some exercises that could help.

The specialist also mentioned that a Datscan (relatively new) could confirm whether S has some kind of Parkinsonian syndrome but agreed that this would be something of an ordeal for someone with S's problems and that as he could already see the problems she has we could just get on and try to treat them.