When I went to my Neurologist last Tuesday, we decided I would stop taking the Requip, since it was probably the cause of all my stomach problems, other than the PD itself. Also, it was the likely culprit for my hair loss. So, Dr. S. told me to taper off the Requip before I changed over to the samples of Zelepar he gave me. That meant last week I only had two pills a day, instead of the usual three. Starting Tuesday of this week, I’ve only been taking one a day.

Dopamine is the brain chemical that controls muscle movement, and that’s the one that people with Parkinson’s no longer make enough of. Requip tricks the brain into accepting the chemical in it as a substitute for the dopamine, so it’s called a dopamine agonist. Now that I’m down to one pill a day, I can really tell it! My balance is terrible, and my walking is stilted and jerky.

As long as DH can take over the care giving tasks I’m not up to, I’ll continue to do as much as I can to help Daddy. We’ve only got to make it until next Wednesday, and then I can start taking the new medicine. Zelepar, a special form of the medicine called Selegiline, is a different type of Parkinson’s medicine entirely. It is an MAO-inhibitor. I’ve read what that means a dozen times now, but I still don’t understand it well enough to put it in my own words LOL.

The reason Dr. S. is trying this particular prescription is that it dissolves on the tongue and does not go through my digestive system. It goes straight into the blood stream. With the improvement in stomach comfort that I’m seeing from the Miralax and glycerin suppository combination, I’m hoping this new medicine will be the perfect one for me for the time being.

I do know that at some point I will have to go back to taking Sinemet, which was the first medicine I took. It nauseated me, too, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, because there is a patch form of it in drug trials now.

So for the next few days I’ll be weaving and lurching around here like I’m drunk, but I can put up with it, knowing there’s something new to try just days away. I am ever thankful to God that there are so many researchers working to find new ways of fighting the symptoms of this disease, working on ways to slow its progress down, and ultimately to cure it.