BlueK58
Member
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2013
- Messages
- 25
- Reason
- Loved one DX
- Diagnosis
- 06/2009
- Country
- US
- State
- MA
- City
- Westfield
Hello there! My mom has been living with ALS for about 4 years now. At home and on hospice. Was recommended that she try Ativan because she has EXTREME anxiety. Just figured I'd share our experience with it...Previously she was taking xanax which was working well. Nurse suggested Ativan with the hopes it would work better. My mother had a terrible reaction to this medication. It seemed to enhance her PBA (uncontrollable crying or laughter-but im sure most of you know that) and made her mind foggy and confused. She could hardly communicate and would forget what she was trying to say half way through. Literally would panic and cry for hours until she was exasperated. Was really hard to see her like that and not be able to help. It also made her much more drowsy during the day. My mom is a RN and told us she wanted to give the medication a little more time (she recently started hospice services at home so her daily routine was changed and started a few other meds so we waited it out because she doesn't do well with changes in schedule) She was acting so exhausted, we began to fear she was going to pass on soon. Looked up some info about Ativan online and apparently 1 in 10 people have this reaction to the medication. We talked to the nurse and she is back on xanex. She is now communicating on her dynavox, sleeping less in the day and most importantly SMILING again-back to her normal self. I am not knocking the medication, I've seen it work wonders for other people. Just putting out our experience because we were all very scared and thought the worst. I would hate for anyone else to go through the worry and would hate for the person with ALS to feel that way! Anyone else had a bad reaction to ativan?