Conference quark::human_relations-v1

I would suggest you ask this in the HYDRA::MEDICAL conference, though I
don't think that you could get much more than semi-informed and uninformed
opinions.  Has the man's wife discussed the notion of a link to the pills
with his doctor?

					Steve

    My mother was diagnosed (with CAT scans, etc.) by a neurologist at Mass
    Gen'l Hospital as having Alzheimer's, but later on when she had a heart
    attack, her heart doctor told me that it was not Alzheimer's at all. 
    Actually she had been having mini strokes that had eroded her brain
    cells enough to make her behave as though she had Alzheimer's.
    
    Her behavior was bizarre, too...
    
    -Dotti.
    

    RE:  .1
    
    Yes, Steve.  The doctors have no interest in pursuing it further.  She
    even had one doctor become blunt to the point of rudeness:
    
    "Look!  Your husband has Alzheimer's.  You had better face up to that
    fact.  You are wasting my time and YOURS."  Then he hung up on her.
    
    What has her concerned is the fact that a couple of months ago (or
    whenever) there was a news article on 20/20 about this particular drug.
    Evidently there were others who have experienced the same situation.
    They are attempting to follow-up on this.
    
    I should also mention that this gentleman lives in a very rural part of
    Maine and doesn't have access to the medical wonders that a good
    medical facilitiy would have.  To find a specialist, she would have to
    travel 2 hours to Bangor, then I'm not so sure what luck she would
    have.  There are no Alzheimer's support groups where she lives.  
    
    Thanks for responding.
    

For what its worth -

My grandfather had Alzhiemers,

and my mother used to work in nurseing homes that
a: had Alzhiemer's patients,

b: had patients on Halizon (halizol).

The effects from her stories are similar...

Options for your mother -

1. - ask a pharmacist what the side effects of halizon are. The reason to ask
them is three fold - they are extremely well trained in drugs, their effects and
thier interactions, - they are a outside the loop (some doctors 
hate being questioned) - They have nothing to loose/gain by giving advise and
they tend to be board.

2. - in order for a drug to be certified for use, its side effects have to be
tracked/reported - call and ask the Drug manufacturer and/or the FDA.

3. Call the u-mass medical center and ask them about it, and if they don't 
know they can probably direct you to better pople.

4. stop giving him the pills and see what happens...

grins,

clark.

	Halcion (TM) has, within the last year or so, come under
	scrutiny by various agencies, practitioners and the media,
	both in the U.S. and Europe, because of side effects more
	pronounced than were originally reported by the manufacturer.

	There was/is a criminal case in the U.S. where a police 
	officer, accused of murdering his estranged wife, states that
	he has no recollection of events leading up to the murder, nor
	the murder itself. He had been taking Halcion, as directed by
        his doctor.

	Other people on Halcion claim to suffer from severe memory
 	lapses, confusion, bizarre behaviors, "blackouts", etc.

	Up until a few years ago, the tablets were usually dispensed
	in 10 Mg doses. In Europe, once the reported severe side effects
	began to be taken seriously, the maximum strength of each
	tablet was scaled down to 5 Mg a couple of years ago.

	Beginning in January 1989, the same limitation took effect
	in the U.S. 

	Halcion does continue to be prescribed and sold, however.

          Alan 	

    Alan,
    
    Would you mind revealing your source of information?
    
    Thanks

    Re: .6
    
    A few places for my info:
    
      - A segment on "Evening Magazine" (Channel 4 in Boston) last
        season 
    
      - A blurb in the Globe around the same time
    
      - My nephew - who had had 10 Mg tablets prescribed for him - being
        told by the pharmacist when he was refilling his prescription
        that the 10 Mg tablets were no longer manufactured and the reasons.
    
          Alan 

    re: .4
    
>4. stop giving him the pills and see what happens...
    
    VERY BAD advice!
    
    Halcion (triazolam) is a benzodiazepine.  As with other drugs in
    this class, serious withdrawal symptoms can occur if the drug
    is discontinued abruptly.  The withdrawal symptoms are more common
    when the drug has been administered in high doses and/or for long
    periods of time; however, to be safe, a physician should be always
    be consulted first.
    
    re: .5
    
    The dosages mentioned in your reply are high by a factor of 10.
    The usual adult dose of Halcion is 0.125 to 0.5 mg.  The drug
    is available in 0.125 mg and 0.25 mg tablets; Upjohn discontinued
    the 0.5 mg tablet in 1988.

    Re: .8
    
    Jerry, you're right about the dosages I gave. They're not 10 Mg.
    
    I guess I was thinking of some of the more common strengths of
    Valium.
    
      Alan  

My apologies about the bad advise.

In retrospect it is bad advice, a physician should always be consolted first.

But if it is that addictive (severe withdrawal == addictive to me...)than all
the more reason to get him off of it.

All I caught was that it was a sleeping pill...

My apologies.

Clark.

    If interested I have the hardcopy from the 20/20 program.  It would 
    probably take me a few days to find it, but send me mail and I'll
    mail you a xerox.
    
    Mary Jo

    Just because something is addictive doesn't mean its bad.  The two have
    nothing to do with each other.  If it makes his/her quality of life
    better or livable, then arguably it doesn't make a whit of difference
    if its addictive or not.

    You might check a medical dictionary for the definition of Binswanger's
    (sp?) or Binschwanger's.  It's a close cousin to Alzheimers.
    
    mdh

re - Addictive:

But if your quality of life depends on a chemical, has it really improved?
And what happens to the quality of you life when the chemical is removed/no
longer available/no longer works the way it used to.

Personally, I've been there, done that and I do know how it comes out.
In the long run addictions do not improve the quality of your life, they
control it.

no grins,

clark.

ps - btw - the drug in question, if it is the cause of the stated symptoms,
is not improveing the quality of that mans life by any definition of improving
the quality of life that I have seen or would care to live by.

    Let get serious: lets say I have diabetes.  I'm effectively addicted to
    insuline because without it my body goes to hell.  That's not to say
    that taking insulin is bad, its a necessary evil.
    
    The same goes for people who have glaucoma and have to take eye drops
    once a day for the rest of their lives or go blind.  Or people with
    high blood pressure.  Or...

    Jim,
    
    Somewhere between serious and Friday afternoon:  *Everyone* needs
    insulin, but most of us have pancreases (pancreai?) to generate
    it for us.  When it comes to sleeping pills, however... NO sleeping
    pill should be prescribed for more than a month or two, since
    using them disturbs the natural sleep cycle.  There is more than
    one *kind* of sleeping pill in the world, and very few people are
    restricted to only one kind.  The bad news is that some are addictive,
    e.g., opiates; some are habituating, e.g., barbiturates, and some
    have really bizarre side effects, e.g., Thalidomide.
    
    							Ann B.

    No disagreement here.  Many of the common things people become addicted
    to (nicotine, alcohol etc.) are not necessary evils and you probably
    don't want to become addicted to them.
    
    Even if everyone needs a chemical, I'd still say your addicted to it if
    your quality of life decreases or stops if you don't take it (orally,
    injection, inhalation etc.) semi-regularly.  Maybe an extra clause
    to whit that "your life will not improve after cessation of drug intake"
    needs to be added, though.
    
    I have a strong aversion to blanket statements like "all X are bad,"
    something which was becoming readily apparent here.

    
    I think what I would do is check out good reference sources.  I know
    that if you go to "Booksmith" bookstores and look into the HEALTH
    section, usually you can find inexpensive/expensive books concerning
    Neurological Disorders.  They even have equivalents to PDR's there.
    Many times you can read a drug companies information on a particular
    drug and get scared to hell.  Other times the drug companies don't
    have enough data.
    
    I would also try to find out if this person is drinking anything that
    contains alchohol.  Drugs that are used for Neurological disorders
    many times have negative effects when combined with alcohol.  I knew
    a person here at DEC who had a brain tumor.  He kept on going to the
    eye doctor because his eye movement kept becoming more narrower in
    one of his eyes.  It was bad, they kept changing his prescripment for
    eye lenses calling it a serious case of astigmatism or something.
    About two weeks before he died he discovered it wasn't an eye problem
    but a tumor in the brain pushing up against his eye.
    
    Check out those books and also look into epilepsy, certain types of
    auras where the person has some kind of physiological changes can
    make a person do things like spit because they experiance a bad taste
    or oder which doesn't even exist or, they may feel nauceous.  I think
    maybe you need to ask more questions to the person with the problem.
    And remember that Epilepsy is a Stigmatized disorder.  There are
    many different forms of this disorder in the Boston area alone there
    are over 60,000 known cases of Epilepsy.  Many people have this
    disorder and don't even know they have it.  The types of seizures
    where a person has a convulsion are easy to diagnose, but people who
    just simply stare alot are often not diagnosed because they think it
    might just be a bad habit or something.  It usually is developed in
    people in their late twenties and up.  You can be born with it or
    simply develope it from alcohol consumption or having had a concusion
    at some point in time in your life.  Concussions do not always show
    immediate signs of side effects.  Sometimes it takes years for the
    side effects to show themselves.
    

I'm pretty certain a diagnosis of Alzheimer's is only 100% 
sure by autopsy. Source: Science News, sometime in the past two years.
(My mother in law was in a nursing home for six years
with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's and we read a lot about it.)

The quickest way to find out about a drug is to pop into
big pharmacy and ask the pharmacist to show you the
write up for the drug in ... um ... the big drug book ...
the Physician's Desk Reference?
($5.00 says Ann Broomhead will remember the title.)

*ALL* pharmacies have it.  It's tough reading, but most 
other texts that chat about drugs are based on this book.
Will be helpful to bring along the bottle or copy the 
label so you know just which flavor of the drug to 
look up.

The Stop and Shop pharmacist looked up some drugs for me
a few months ago.  Glad I looked.  Turned out I was not
supposed to have *any* alcohol with the drugs, but didn't
know til I read the book.  I had just come from the
periodontist and wanted a DRINK  :) :)  

BTW, I couldn't find the drug entry in the book, so
the pharmacist looked it up for me.  Took me 30 or 40
minutes to read about the three drugs and figure out
what I wanted to know.

I always look at the drug description in this book, ever
since I was a newly married person of 29 and a doctor gave me some
pills that cause birth defects without asking if I was pregnant.
While I didn't plan to have children, he did not know that.

    Re: .19
    
    I'm not Ann, but will I do?  Yes, you are thinking of the Physician's
    Desk Reference, generally referred to as the PDR.  But pharmacies also
    are required to have the manufacturer's data sheet on all the drugs
    they dispense, and most pharmacists will be glad to give you a copy,
    since so few people ask for them.
    
    You can find the PDR in most larger bookstores - they are somewhat
    expensive (in the $30-$50 range), but worthwhile.  You can also
    subscribe to periodic updates.
    
    				Steve