Aricept: the first try with meds

Aside from vitamins, my mother has few medications and has never taken any medications on a regular basis, simply because of her good health. Although she has always believed that medicine can be helpful, she also saw medicine as something that other people need--not her.  So after our first meeting with the neurologist, where he suggested she begin taking Aricept, she could not grasp that taking this medicine was going to be a long-term, most likely, a lifetime regimen. She wanted a pill that she could take and be cured. Admittedly, the Alzheimer's was already starting to play with her ability to reason, so just getting her to regularly take the medicine was challenging, but we made it through the first three months on the beginning dosage.

After 3 months on 5 mg of Aricept, she felt that she was making progress. I didn't see it, and I made the colossal mistake of sharing my feelings with her and the doctor at her follow up appointment. He said that he actually didn't expect to see much change as that dosage is usually just a starter to see if she could tolerate the medicine and that we would next move to 10 mg. It seemed like a logical step, and I was pleased to start moving forward, but I did not realize at that time how profoundly my observation of non-progress affected my mom. From that time forward she became difficult about taking her medication citing that I didn't think it was making a difference anyway.

The final straw that did us in was one more change in the dosage.  For a few months, the FDA approved the dosage of Aricept to go up to 15 mg. This happened just as my mom was experimenting with the drug. She was tolerating 10 mg well, so we figured "why not try the 15 mg?" Her body did not tolerate it well. She had bowel problems and it made her so uneasy going out of the house that she gave up the medicine all together. Again, because her logic was beginning to be impaired, she couldn't accept that this could be a result of the dosage change. She simply gave up Aricept all together. We couldn't get her to give it another try at any dosage.