Say hello to my little friend

The things that make PD bearable are pills. They are dopamine agonists and the super star, Levodopa. At the moment, my pill of choice is mirapex, a dopamine agonist.

Parkinson's is caused by the deterioration of neurons in the brain that produce dopamine. Dopamine serves as a chemical messenger allowing communication between parts of the brain that control movement. This communication coordinates smooth and balanced movement in the muscles. A lack of dopamine causes a loss in the ability to control body movements.

What to do? What to do?

We take drugs that do one of two things (a) drugs that stimulates the receptors in nerves in the brain that normally would be stimulated by dopamine, called dopamine agonists or (b) take a drug that is converted into dopamine when it enters the body, called levodopa or just l-dopa.

One of the drawbacks of continued use of levodopa is it becomes less effective over time and overuse of it may cause, among other things, uncontrolled body movements (dyskinesias). So often, patients are put on dopamine agonists as a beginning treatment.

The dopamine agonist, mirapex, in combination with amantadine, is working well for me. However, as I have stated before, there can be serious side effects to the drug. One side effect is sudden onset of sleep. It can happen anywhere, including when the patient is driving. Other side effects are compulsive behaviours, such as gambling, and there are horror stories of victims losing their entire savings. In one lawsuit in the USA, the plaintiff began taking Mirapex in 1997, and suffered from a 4-year gambling addiction during which he gambled away $260,000. He claimed that Mirapex caused his gambling problem, and that the drug's makers, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim, knew about its potential to cause compulsive behavior and had never issued a warning. He was awarded a huge settlement.

Fortunately, warnings of compulsive behaviour are now standard practice. I would hate to lose mirapex because of some other person's problem.

And, if you are thinking of suing, you might want to take heed of Ambrose Bierce's definition of a lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.