Mum is 89 and has moderate dementia developing slowly and diagnosed as vascular dementia mainly, but has been on reminyl for about 4 years. The abdominal pain is described by her as cramping abdominal pain along the mid-line at waist level. It is increasing in frequency and intensity over the last 5 months and is somewhat relieved when she stretches out in her electric armchair. She has little appetite and now no longer can sit at the table to have a meal but only in this chair. The pain now even comes and wakes her at night and she has difficulty sleeping anyway. She also has a craving for sweets which is hard to control as she replaces her meals with sweets. She is actually not frail and when not in pain is alert, can walk freely, likes to be active and go out and about and socialise. She lives in her own home with full time live in carers. She knows all the family and reads and writes well. Please advise what to do as we have seen many doctors with no diagnosis and reminyl has never been mentioned as a possible cause!
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Q: Mum has been getting increasing abdominal pain after 4years on reminyl, should she now stop?
I am not a doctor, so I'm not trying to give you medical advice, but I searched Reminyl side effects and on drug.com this came up:
Abdominal pain, anemia, blood in urine, depression, diarrhea, dizziness, fatigue, headache, inability to sleep, indigestion, loss of appetite, nausea, runny nose, sleepiness, tremor, urinary tract infection, vomiting, weight loss
Something is causing your mother pain. Could you try one more doctor to see if you can find one who is willing to taper off her Reminyl or try experimenting with her other medications to see if this is the cause?
Medication side effects are often a problem. Sometimes they must be weathered, as the benefits out weight the problems. However, your mother's pain is a large issue. If doctors haven't found any other cause for her pain, after running tests, what is there to lose by seeing if Reminyl is the culprit? I admire your tenacious attitude. You may want to try a different type of doctor and see what this person says.
Good luck. I found it very frustrating when I ran into a similar situation with my dad. He was in unbearable pain and everyone seemed at a loss. Finally, a nurse practitioner spoke up and said, "Let's try taking him off of Neurontin." He was fine in a few days. The pain was caused by the drug. Everyone is different in their response to drugs and they should always be considered. Keep trying.
Take care,
Carol
Like what Carol pointed out, this may be side effect. If it is the side effect from the drug, you need to stop it immediately. My FIL was able to stop all his AD drugs as soon as he had side effects such as no appetite and too much confusion. For the loss of appetite, we stopped it right away before we called the doctor. For confusion, we called the doctor and stopped it.
You cannot keep this going for a long time. Stop it now and get other medications.
Regards,
Nina
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