Hallucinations, Parkinson's Dementia, and Razadyne

I posted this on the AD forum, and someone suggested I should post this over here also.

My wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1995 . . takes Mirapex, Sinemet, and Amantadine for PD. Recently has had heavy bouts of hallucination. Her doctor has reduced and attempted to balance her meds over the 24 hour day to see if the Parkinson's meds might be causing the hallucinations. So far this hasn't helped. He gave us a sample of Razadyne ER to try for several weeks to possibly reduce the hallucinations.

It also appears that there are different kinds of hallucinations . . my wife, Elinor is seeing things that are not there or happening, like there are critters in the house or our giant popular tree is moving up and down to let our neighbors cat pass under, and there are workers camping out on our deck in freezing weather. Other people talk about seeing "green and pink lace patterns on all white surfaces".
(Elinor does not appear to have any other symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease that I have read about)

I was wondering if anyone has experience with, and will the Razadyne ER help my wife Elinor with her hallucination problems on top of the effects of Parkinson's disease and it's medications ? And, how long should I expect to wait to see results??
(she has just taken her 7th 8mg capsule)
Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Happy Holidays everyone . . Tom

I have had no experience with Razadyne, however my husb. had terrible episodes with hallucinations taking Selegeline, and Amandatine.  When he was weaned off these, he improved, however I wonder how much the Sinemet currently contributes, because he still has some skin issues with "things growing on his skin which he has to pick out."  But the situation is not nearly as bad as before.  

Good luck!

Just wanted to give you my experience with my Dad. He was diagnosed with PD in 1998. Was on sinemet and amantadine from the beginning. He was still living with my mother who had Alzheimers in 2003 when he started having hallucinations. Always horrific ones like me and my brothers were sawing him in half. I changed neurologists to get a 2nd opinion since the first one said there was nothing we could do about them. The 2nd neurologist at Vanderbilt found that it was sleep deprivation. My mother was keeping him up at night and he didn't get any sleep. We gave Mom a sleeping pill and Dad one and discontinued his amantadine and the hallucinations subsided. He was taking 1/2 a .5 clonozepam. The only thing we noticed after that was when he did not get a good nights sleep, he would be disoriented and hallucinating the next day.

After a year or so, we noticed Dad getting aggrevated and mad and not sleeping and the hallucinations came back. Dr. upped his clonozepam to 1 tablet of the .5mg. That was awful. He wouldn't sleep but an hour or two and be in a rage the rest of the night. I called the dr. and he said he wanted to change his med to another drug. But before i would do that I looked up on the internet the side effects of Clonozepam and Dad had about all of them. I weaned him off and he gradually got to the point where he was mentally 6 years ago. I have my Dad back mentally now and he and I couldn't be happier. During the time he was on clonozepam he would always tell me something isn't right and point to his head and then say I'm solomn. I was taking as depressed. But after being off the clonzepam, he has not felt that way. His mobility has drasticly improved too. He doesn't sleep all day anymore either and sleeps about 8 hrs a night without any medication for help. All I know is right now, it is good. That is how we live just from day to day.

I just wanted to tell my story in case it could help anyone out there. He is now on Carbidopa/levo and a time released carbidop/levo and some heart and copd medication.

God Bless All,
Reese Rah

Hallucinations might happen with or without medications especially to the old people in their 80"s. They are retied and their brain is already inactve. Usually dementia strikes in this age because of the inactivity of the brain. That's why the progression of the disease is fast in this age because most of them are retired, they don't have to struggel for life and their motivation to fight the disease is low.
Unlike the young people who are in the heigths of their life, the disease strikes, so the determinations to win over the disease is very strong. Their mind is active so hallucinations has no place unless given by wrong medications.