Yetta Nother Meds Update

During a recent visit with my neurologist, she increased my dose of Sinemet by adding another pill per day.  Here’s how everything stands now.  (I hope I’m recording the dosage amounts from the bottle labels correctly – sometimes it’s not clear what the numbers mean.)

• Ropinirole, 0.5 mg – 3 tabs 3 x day
• Azilect, 1 mg – 1 tab in the morning
• Sinemet (carbidopa-levodopa), 25-100 mg – 1 tab 5 x day
• Nortriptyline, 50 mg – 1 tab at night
• Simvastatin, 20 mg – 1 tab at night
• Clonazepam, 1 mg – 1 tab at night
• Androgel 1.62%, 20.25 mg per pump – 4 pumps every morning

I also take these OTC items:

• Aspirin, 325 mg – 1 tab
• Multivitamin with Minerals
• D3-2000 IU
• CoQ10, 100 mg
• Saw Palmetto, 450 mg
• Acetyl L-Carnitine, 400 mg

Note:  I felt I needed the extra dose on Sinemet because on some days I start to lose the benefits by late afternoon or early evening.  I limp, I lurch, I tremble.  The extra dose allows me to function as a normal human being if I’m doing something at night.

However, Sinemet scares me, because I know that after, say, five years of taking the drug I’ll develop side effects that’ll be worse than PD itself.  So I take this 5th dose only on days when I need it.  And on the weekends, if I’m just slobbing around at home and not going out, I cut back even further and take only three hits.

My neurologist was quite keen to record my daily pill-popping schedule, so I’ll include it here.

On weekdays, here’s what happens:

Mornings:

4:00  – My alarm goes off and I listen to BBC news on the radio for 15 minutes before I get out of bed.  Then I stumble to the bathroom for my morning ablutions.  Apply Androgel at this point.

4:30  – Pop the first set of pills, on an empty stomach.  One Azilect, three Ropinerole, one Sinemet.

5:15  – Eat breakfast.  Slam down all the OTC vitamins, minerals and aspirin.  Leave for work c. 5:45.

6:30  – Arrive at work, fix cup of coffee.

7:30  – Pop 2nd round of pills:  three Ropinerole, one Sinemet.

10:30  – Pop additional Sinemet.

11:30  – Eat lunch.  At school I almost always have a lunch meeting with some group of teachers or administrators; it lasts an hour.

Afternoons:

1:30  – Pop another round of pills:  three Ropinerole, one Sinemet.

3:30 or 4:15 (depending on after school meetings) – Leave school.  Ideally, head for gym.  (I’ve been getting over a cold and have not been working out as much as I’d like.)

5:00 – If needed, take the final tab of Sinemet.  For example, if I’m at the gym I’ll take it to keep me from limping about or careening into another naked man in the showers.  (Joke!  The showers are all single stalls….)

9:00:  Go to bed.  Take the nighttime drugs:  Nortriptyline, Simvastatin, Clonazepam.

So that’s how I live Monday through Friday.  I’m pretty much popping Parkinson’s pills every three hours.  I know empirically that if I delay a set of pills, letting, say, four hours elapse, for the rest of the day I’m off kilter.  I limp, I can’t type with my right hand, my right arm shakes.  I careen into naked men in my gym’s showers.

On weekends, anything goes.  On Saturday and Sunday I often sleep until 9:00 or 10:00 a.m.  I schedule myself to take pills every three hours after I wake up, but if the evening comes along and I’m staying at home (reading, or watching a movie, or careening into my husband in the shower), I cut back on the Sinemet to only three doses.