Hey Judy. In clearing out our mom's house for estate sale and getting the caches of papers!! Out, we found some poignant stuff. Clippings from B.s. adverts ...fix your memory today!
Notes she had written. "Memory terrible. Forget to eat. Forget to take meds." She is in MC now. This has been one of hardest journeys I have had. And our family has faced some tragedy.
Good luck to you. And sometimes in saying that, it comes across as fatalistic. Not meant that way. Come back and tell us.
She responded very well to both medicines along with cerofolin. It was a miraculous change, and we saw improvement. She has repetitive conversations, but self proclaims that she has short term memory loss. She went from aggressive, mean and anxious to pleasant generous and grateful. The accident put her back to the mean aggressive demanding person she was before medicine. She has recently lost more memory, forgot my father died four years ago. That never happened before now. We reintroduced the aricept at 5mg, just because she had stomach problems. We are moving her out of rehab to assisted living that gives a lot of assistance. The focus will be to restore her sleep, food and movement. Today, she was pleasant and agreed to allow us to pick her care plan. Wish there was new medicines out there. Thank you for letting me rant.
How old is your Mom, how far advanced is her dementia, how long was she on Aricept, and how long was she in the hospital and did she have surgery? This is one of those drugs that you really can’t tell if it’s helping...you take it and hope it slows down the progression, but how can one say for sure? My Mom was on Aricept for probably at least 12 years. She had no side effects and her progression was slow. Would it have been slow anyway? Who knows. It’s not like a BP med that you have quantifiable proof if it works. After a serious surgery her dementia increased a lot, a huge decline that she didn’t seem to be able to overcome. We stopped the Aricept (and some other meds) when she was having blood pressure issues, and she never went back on it. I guess my point is, depending on the answer to the above questions, if she has no side effects and you “think” it may have helped her, it’s one of those things that doesn’t hurt to try. But be aware that the hospitalization itself may put her on another plateau.
Thank you. She responded so well to the medicine 5 years ago that it has been a real remedy.my mother’s dementia stopped and her disposition improved 100 percent. When this accident happened I would have thought she would have been worse. She is, but not as severe as I would have anticipated. Thank you for your answer.
Depending on where she is in the dementia there may be no need to start it again. If you have not noticed a change in mental status (a decline more than what would be expected in a situation like this) the medication may not have been doing anything for her. A phone call to the doctor might be a place to start. Aricept is not a drug that needs to be "titrated" up or down so if she is going to continue it can be restarted at the same dose. (Namenda is one that you slowly increase the dose and to stop you should slowly decrease the dosage)
Aricept slows the progression but does not stop it (If it works at all) so at some point it will no longer be effective. The guessing game is when is that point? If you have not seen a decline I would say the medication is no longer effective for her.
Notes she had written. "Memory terrible. Forget to eat. Forget to take meds." She is in MC now. This has been one of hardest journeys I have had. And our family has faced some tragedy.
Good luck to you. And sometimes in saying that, it comes across as fatalistic. Not meant that way. Come back and tell us.
We reintroduced the aricept at 5mg, just because she had stomach problems. We are moving her out of rehab to assisted living that gives a lot of assistance. The focus will be to restore her sleep, food and movement. Today, she was pleasant and agreed to allow us to pick her care plan. Wish there was new medicines out there. Thank you for letting me rant.
This is one of those drugs that you really can’t tell if it’s helping...you take it and hope it slows down the progression, but how can one say for sure? My Mom was on Aricept for probably at least 12 years. She had no side effects and her progression was slow. Would it have been slow anyway? Who knows. It’s not like a BP med that you have quantifiable proof if it works. After a serious surgery her dementia increased a lot, a huge decline that she didn’t seem to be able to overcome. We stopped the Aricept (and some other meds) when she was having blood pressure issues, and she never went back on it. I guess my point is, depending on the answer to the above questions, if she has no side effects and you “think” it may have helped her, it’s one of those things that doesn’t hurt to try. But be aware that the hospitalization itself may put her on another plateau.
If you have not noticed a change in mental status (a decline more than what would be expected in a situation like this) the medication may not have been doing anything for her.
A phone call to the doctor might be a place to start.
Aricept is not a drug that needs to be "titrated" up or down so if she is going to continue it can be restarted at the same dose. (Namenda is one that you slowly increase the dose and to stop you should slowly decrease the dosage)
Aricept slows the progression but does not stop it (If it works at all) so at some point it will no longer be effective. The guessing game is when is that point? If you have not seen a decline I would say the medication is no longer effective for her.