Hard to believe this happy pirate screamed at, berated, and generally was ugly nasty to me less than 4 hours after this picture was taken.
Pluses:
- His insomnia is better
- He is no longer this nasty borderline psycho person
- He is a bit more predictable
- He is no longer purchasing the most off the wall stuff from ebay
- Most of the negative psychological side effects are gone (including temper and outbursts).
Minuses:
- More tremors
- The LDopa isn’t lasting as long
- Muscle spasms
- Some loss of muscle control
It’s a hard decision. He felt so good with the Mirapex. It would’ve ended our marriage though – he suspects it and I know it for fact. I actually lived in fear for what he’d do next and – for a while – lived in fear that he wouldn’t go off of it. It was like this high he was getting. It took something fairly bad for him to wake up and see it was causing some real problems — both in his personality AND in our marriage. Thankfully he spoke to his doctor and they both agreed it should be stopped.
Ugly ugly drug. I predict more lawsuits as time progresses — no not from us. Parkinson’s is ugly enough to take the risk with the negative side effects. But what about the poor people with restless leg syndrome? Is this drug and the truly odd (and frankly a bit scary) side effects worth it?
A link from askapatient listing some rather scary side effects.
Remember the lawsuit risk I mentioned?
**I took the photo above at The Greene Turtle on April 19, 2008 during the Fells Point Pirate Invasion’s Pirate Pub Crawl.
