This is a Medication Mastery project that focuses on the drug Carbidopa-Levodopa for Parkinson’s Disease. Thank you to my cousin Lily and my Tia Nena. You guys are amazing and we love you!
This is my cousin lily and her mother has parkinson’s how long has tia nena been diagnosed with parkinson’s she was diagnosed about 10 years ago we suspect she had it about 13 years our drug that we’re talking about today is levodopa carbodopa how long had she had parkinson’s before she started on that drug let’s say about a year and a half yeah it wasn’t that
Bad that we felt she needed medication we actually didn’t know that it was parkinson’s we were still trying to figure out you know get second opinions went from a neurologist to a movement specialist and then we went from there how long did it take this medication to you know become helpful it reduces tremors and helps with muscle rigidity like how long did
That take for that to become effective when she started taking her medication it i want to say about a week and we started seeing a really big improvement she takes that like what four times a day that’s a around the clock yes it is like and one of the things to help with that is having a good support system do you do you have that pretty much uh between
My siblings and my nieces we all help each other out with her she’s she still can do a lot of things by herself but we just pretty much watch her make sure she doesn’t fall or hurt herself but she can cook she can write she can beat herself and go to the bathroom take a shower oh that’s good some of the benefits that come with the medication is decreased
Restlessness did you all notice that oh yeah so yes she’s able to like sit down for a longer period of time she’s a big fan of uh crossword puzzles do puzzles for one two three hours sometimes like you know what get up from there but very very good at it and she’s steady you know one of the things that we also want to talk about with our parkinson’s patients
And their families are the warnings and safety concerns uh with this specific drug there’s something called neuroleptic malignant syndrome that’s where people get like very rigid muscles and they get a bad fever so we want to watch out for those kinds of things one of the more common kinds of things is orthostatic hypotension where when they change positions
Their blood pressure doesn’t quite adapt to it as well so they might have dizziness or lightheadedness and that on top of vision changes sometimes it leads to falls has she ever experienced any of those uh actually she has um here again this past year we’ve seen that and um i think like two weeks ago she actually fell for the first time in a long time and it
Was due to that just of the imbalancing and feeling dizzy when she gets up you know stuff like that sometimes it can lower your white blood cell count and your neutrophils has she had any infections or anything of that nature no that’s good no big side effects that you see with this medication is especially nausea and vomiting is she is she nauseous ever does
She take anything for that write the pudding we’ve tried the jello we tried you know just different and you know you know not so much anymore but at the beginning yes you know there’s a little a little nauseousness what about drowsiness like fatigue yeah we try to um give her her medication when it’s about her nap time so that she won’t transition you know
Yeah and then wakes up she’s she’s good to go yeah because it says insomnia as well is yeah and that’s huge if um i’ve learned to have her on a schedule and you know it’s that’s huge if you don’t have on schedule with their medication and their sleep you’re going to struggle and but she’s doing good keeping it at that constant like therapeutic level that’s
Good their meals you know to be healthier meals you know i think that’s uh to be consistent with that you get a better result with that medication you know it works better shall i say so i think that’s the biggest thing for us and you know and i would recommend that you
Transcribed from video
Medication Mastery – Carbidopa Levodopa By Caleb Valdez