When my medications turned off immediately for no apparent reason, I was befuddled and beyond worried. Not long ago a good friend experienced the same perplexing event with no medical forewarning. I saw an increase in balance issues, a reduction in drug benefit, and it took a longer time for to receive any benefit from my Parkinson’s disease medications.
This has also happened to me only once in ten years. Indeed, it was after a nasty GI virus that landed me in the hospital for what seemed to be cardiac issues, but was instead dehydration and low magnesium levels. I’m sure my gut flora was changed, tho without antibiotics. Following that, I was like another PD person. Normally, someone looking at me would notice an uneven gait, but many tell me they wouldn’t know I had PD. After the virus, I could barely walk, had that shuffle walk with the forward propulsion, was losing balance on my heels, and looked like I was 90 yrs old with PD. My MDS said the worst thing I could do was to increase meds. This was temporary and might take 2 weeks to go back to ‘normal.’ That the best thing I could do is rest and the worst was to push myself. He was right. Although I did push myself to get back to limited exercise.
We had a similar experience with an antibiotic and PD meds, I won’t name it here but my wife was prescribed for gastrointestinal problems and she had a severe reaction (rashes, swelling, itching). We took the extra steps to not only let all our doctors know but our pharmacy as wwell. We call that, reverse education. It sounded better than backwards medical training. Kind of like live and learn, experience makes for good teaching or lessons by patient practice. How about, patient driven medicine? Thanks Karl for a great blog!