Supervised taking of Aricept

[tgisue]

Hi all

My dad has been diagnosed this year with Alzheimers.

He had his first medication appointment with the doctor at the memory clinic.

The doctor has refused to issue the prescription for Aricept until we have a care package in place for someone to give my dad the medication.

He is outraged that he has been deemed not capable of taking a tablet once a day.

Is this standard practice in other peoples experience?

Many thanks

Sue

 

[karaokePete]

That wasn't a pre condition in my wife's case. Having said that, my wife is supervised by me as she couldn't manage her meds herself.

One has to bear in mind that the person with dementia may feel that they are more capable than they are. A couple of years ago my wife decided that she could manage her meds and within 2 days she missed a day and then double dosed to 'make up'. Memory and cognition issues can produce a double whammy effect!

 

[CardiffGirlInEssex]

One of the issues that highlighted my mum had a problem was a failure to manage her warfarin, which she had done very successfully for over 20 years. Ultimately this ended up with district nurses calling daily to administer the correct dose, with pills being kept in a locked box. Mum resents this tremendously as she does not accept she is no longer safe with managing this particular medication herself. Until a few weeks ago she was coping fine with her other meds in dosette packs, as those never change (warfarin dose changes from week to week, and sometimes day to day, to maintain correct clotting rate). But she’s now on her third week in hospital and I am not sure how she will be when (or if) she eventually goes home.

 

[Bunpoots]

It wasn’t a pre condition of my dad being prescribed Aricept either. But this is a very powerful, brain-altering drug and it caused behaviour problems with my dad so I think supervision taking it is a good idea. I can understand your dad being annoyed though!!

I used to go everyday to check dad was ok, including taking his meds and the doctor may have asked me this. I don’t remember. It was 4 years ago and I think the understanding of dementia meds has probably moved on since then.

If your dad won’t accept a carer visiting to give him his meds is there any chance that you could sell him the carer as being something else - e.g. a cleaner/gardener. This is what I did with my dad when I realised that going everyday was too much for me.

I hadn’t realised that dad had not been taking his meds properly for a long time (probably years) and neither had his GP. It wasn’t until I started checking on him, and the meds he had started causing him to pass out, that we all realised the reason why he was being prescribed such high doses of blood pressure meds was because he was failing to take them half the time.
I found a months worth of meds in his garage, in blister packs - which were recommended for his failing memory - which he had simply forgotten about!

It’s very easy in the early stages to think that the PWD is coping far better than they are.