John, so happy things are going well and you have your mom home.  The tweeking of the meds is something we had to do also.  Larry was taking so many meds in the rehab facility after his stroke.  The home nurse assured me a lot of those would be cut or tapered down when Larry saw his doctor.  She was right.  The fatigue I think is normal as she is adjusting to being home maybe trying to do more also.  

I wish you and your mom the best in her recovery.

Julie

John, I am sure you are very happy to have your mom back home. She's probably a lot happier too. The things she experienced in the last week strike me as pretty normal. She's probably very tired and, after all, sleep helps with healing.  As for her medication, your primary care doctor, who knew her before she had a stroke, is probably the best source for evaluating and keeping tabs on what she's taking. Our PCP was extremely helpful in reviewing my wife's meds shortly after she came home. One of the drugs that we dropped was the anti-depressant Zoloft. Another drug we are monitoring is Baclofen, which can also cause drowsiness. I don't want to micromanage my wife's healthcare professionals but I determined to keep her from being over-medicated. I don't want her sitting around in a stupor all the time. So far she's not but then again we've been careful and alert with her medication and we've stopped or reduced some of them, especially the ones the hospital with her when she came home. By the way, your primary care physician can be her best advocate going forward so I hope you make good use of him or her.  We still use our PCP to monitor the medication my wife's rehab doc is prescribing. Keep in mind that with older folks such as your mom, selecting the right drug at the right dosage is often very tricky. Also, somewhere down the road you might want to take your mom to a university medical center to get a good consultation/second opinion about her overall treatment and condition. We did that and it was very beneficial.

In any event, good luck with all of this. Your mother is very lucky to have you.

Ron

John: wonderful news. An adjustment certainly, but I know that you are so enjoying being home and working things out on your own turf. Bruce's meds also needed tweaking and still do at times. And his PCP has been terrific in listening to the issues and reviewing the meds.

Soon you will get into a good routine with all the caregivers and therapists, just takes a bit working between all the follow up appointments. Stool softeners should not make Mom go, they only keep the business soft. She may have been on one that also contained a laxative, so be sure to run that by her PCP as well. You can always dose every other or every third day if she still needs help.

So happy for both of you. Please do keep in touch as you can and let us know how things are going. Debbie

Debbie,

What they called a stool softener is actually a laxative, when you read the label.

Mom is waking up much better in the morning.

After the nurse and PT today, we are going out to Quest for blood test for the doctor's appointment on Tuesday.

John

Mom had a great PT session this morning. 2 days ago was not good, but the therapist was impressed with her performance today. The changes in medication seem to be helping.

It seems like the nurse and therapists all want to get in between 9 and 1, then it calms down, especially if we have no outside appointments.

John

John, what sometimes happens, is you have a hard piece of stool that is the first one out.   The longer it has been in there, the harder it gets.   The stool softener works on that so it will finally come out.   BUT, the stuff behind it is more recent and when the 'plug' is gone, it all comes out.    (warning/graphic poop description)Bob takes a stool softener every night or his stool gets so hard he passes blood and then the big squirt after.    You know if they need it if they are not going everyday, or if it looks not smooth, but like little balls stuck together.

Without it, he would  be in a contant constipation/squirt problem.   He takes Walmarts 'equate' brand of stool softener that says compare to colace (docusate sodium 100mg)

I did make the mistake of thinking of his mood pill (citalopram 20mg) as a 'la la' drug, and so tried to get him off it early on so he wouldn't be ''drugged"  and his baclofen 10mg (3x daily) as reg muscle relaxers like I used to take, and those really knocked me out, so tried to get him off them.   Both, at that time, were a mistake to mess with.   Stroke people are very exhausted because it's like the electric grid went down and you are trying to run everything in a mansion on one Home Depot generator.   The brain becomes so fatigued - he was just as fatigued without them as he was with them, except he started crying in misery and then when I tried to cut the baclofen, he started having severe muscular tightening pain.

He is 2.5 years out and is now off the citalopram and only takes 2 baclofen a day, instead of 3.   This mostly came about because we can't seem to get the third one in because of his sleep patterns!    I often wonder if his hand would be a little looser if we could get the 3rd pill in.   I will warn you, that what isn't tight now, won't stay that way.   Bob's hand was loose and floppy at first, but over months began to tighten up into a fist and his arm began to pull in.

Bob had normal blood pressure before his stroke, but the stroke caused it to go up and he was on meds for it.    Within the last few months, he began to experience low blood pressure, so his dose began to get smaller until it was still too low on the smallest dose - so he is off bld prssr meds now.