Thanks for reading this an any help you can offer.
I started the duloxetine taper Saturday (yesterday) for mom. The capsules have well over 500 beads in them, so I took out 6 beads for Saturday's pill, and 12 for Sunday's pill (she takes them in morning). Today (Sunday) at 5pm she had 30+ minutes of anger and "weepiness", but not really crying (she kicked her walker and stormed around the house in frustration at just about everything...without any need of her walker, so I guess that's good, but it's got me on edge). I haven't changed her lorazepam, but Thursday she dropped part of her dose in the bathtub (her caregiver was bathing her at the time) so I had no idea if she dropped the 1/8 of a pill or the 1/4 of a pill (to make the 3/8 dose for 1pm). So I just gave her 1/4 a pill when I arrived home at 2:00pm. So she may have gotten 1/8 extra Thursday, or the normal amount. Perhaps that could cause a problem 3 days later (**IF** it was the 1/8 extra, which I don't know)?
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I'm thinking the outburst today was just interdose withdrawal from lorazepam, her previous dose being at 4:00pm (she occasionally has this, but not usually with the outburst of anger). It usually takes an hour to kick in, but she didn't seem to start calming down until 5:35 or so (and her outburst began at the time when the lorazepam usually kicks in, although the dose is lower now than it used to be and it's not always predictable). Or could such a small reduction in the duloxetine cause this? I'm finding that hard to imagine.
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Prior to 5pm today she had a really good day. She even went to the store and had only very minor problems. She used the cart at the store to steady herself and you wouldn't have known she had Parkinson's (or any problem except being old) from looking at her.
Also I didn't mention previously that she takes Oxycodone 5/325 for her back pain (4 a day), and buspar (10mg 3 times a day) to help with the anxiety. (She's also on a whole bunch of other medicines for various other things, but I don't know how helpful it would be to list them all. Her Parkinson's meds can cause similar problems also.)
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I was going to try to reduce her lorazepam 1/16 of a pill tomorrow, but now I'm holding off on that. I was thinking of moving part of her daytime dose to her bedtime dose tonight. She usually takes 5/8 at bedtime, and 1/4 at 10AM. I was thinking of giving her 6/8 at bedtime, and 1/8 at 10am tomorrow. (Her new neurologist originally wanted me to keep her bedtime dose at 1mg, but it was so hard to reduce her daily dose without major problems that cutting her bedtime dose had the least negative impact.) I may have to move the rest of her daytime doses up an hour just in case tomorrow and then slowly spread them back to her normal times throughout the week.
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Thanks for reading this. I'm feeling a bit frazzled and have no one to talk to but a few family members who don't understand what I'm dealing with. (I'm an only child taking care of both parents; dad has heart failure, PTDS, diabetes, manic depression, and stopped taking his lithium and sertraline two years ago and refuses to go to a psychiatrist.) Should I take 18 beads out for tomorrow or wait or what?