TC, I am no expert, but I do know my mother in law claimed she was "so
tired" all the time too.   It could be a side effect of the medication, and
it could be from the illness itself.   Since they have removed the
medication, it might be good to look for other causes.   Do they do regular
medical checkups where she is living?  Might be good to ask for one.

I believe that there are many conditions that can cause chronic
fatigue.  Systemic infections, many cancers, hepatitis, congestive
heart failure, diabetes, and on and on can cause it.  Some of
these may be hard to diagnose, and especially so with a patient
who is not good at self-reporting and who may not hold up well
to extensive testing.

I'm not a doctor and my advice isn't worth much, however, for
whatever they're worth, here are some thoughts on the matter.

I don't know what can be done about chronic infections other than
antibiotic treatments.  If your Mom suffers from a chest infection
as the doctors suspect, or from some other kind of infection, and
if it hasn't responded to multiple courses of antibiotics, there may
not be anything else to do.

If your Mom has cancer, the treatments for that are often very
drastic and difficult - from surgery to chemotherapy, and may
have only a limited probability of a cure.

If she has heart disease there may be drugs that can control it
to some extent, but also with little or no probability of a cure.

What I'm getting at is this: you may have to make a decision about
how much medical practice you want to subject your Mom to
and balance it against what gains you hope to make.  Will she
handle being poked and prodded and stuck with needles?  Will
she tolerate being strapped down and loaded into an MRI
tunnel?  Will she hold still for x-rays and CT scans?  And if you
find out that she has a serious illness that is normally treated
with serious surgery or drugs, will you want that for her and will
she want it for herself?

If I were in your shoes I think I would discuss these issues
with her doctor.  I would want to be sure that all the simple
problems that were easily treatable had been tested for and
ruled out.  If they had, and what was left were the serious
diseases of old age, then I would discuss with him or her
what kind of further testing might be justified and what kind
should be avoided - concentrating instead on making her
as comfortable as possible.

Best of luck.

   Alan

yep.  been there, done that.  you need to get her in for a full
physical exam, but it's likely that it's COPD (Chronic
Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, formerly called emphysema).  The
lung tissue is so abused from years of smoking that the lung sacs
where the oxygen is exchanged lose their flexibility.

When that happens, not only does the patient have extremely
diminished lung capacity, but what's left doesn't do a very good
job of getting rid of C02 and taking in oxygen.  The doc
explained to me that my Mom was able to take in some of the
oxygen she needed, but her lungs couldn't get rid of enough of
the CO2.

The lungs also use their ability to get rid of the excess
moisture, too, which means that there is a lot of fluid in the
lungs, which are no longer flexible enough to cough it up, and
the little hairs called cilia which help move out mucus don't
work either.

If she has an exam, it should include a short treadmill test to
check her blood oxygen & CO2 levels before and after exercise. It
may be that she needs or will soon need to be on oxygen.  That
can be a problem with demented folks, who forget that they are
hooked up to the tubing and just get up and try to walk away.  if
she's still smoking oxygen could be really dangerous, since it
makes fires burn very quickly.

FYI, it was the congestive heart failure caused by the COPD that
killed my mother.  In spite of my efforts to get her to quit (she
once went almost a year, and then started again!) she insisted to
committing slow suicide by continuing to smoke until she had to
go on oxygen, about two months before she died.

Do a google on tiredness and stroke or fatigue and stroke, and you
will see this is EXTREMELY common following stroke - not just for the
first few weeks after either - in follow up studies years after stroke
as many as 40% report being tired to the point where it interferes
with their ability to live their lives.

It seems to be a byproduct of brain injury - and if she has multi-
infarct, she has not had a single isolated brain injury, but continues
to have frequent small assaults on her brain.

TC, I can tell you this about my own Mother who suffered from
dementia.

When she first became ill, she was seriously agitated and they just
didn't know what was wrong.  She was put on two medications - depakote
and zyprexe.  She calmed down and was relatively OK.

Then she began to get so tired I had to practically carry her from
point A to point B.

Take her off the medications, she wasn't tired anymore but began to
grow agitated again.

In the end, it was the depakote.  Whenever she was on it she had no
energy whatsoever.  Putting her only on zyprexe was a big help.

I can't speak for your Wife's condition or the medication she's on,
but it's been my experience that certain medications can have really
undesirable effects with some people, and in my late Mother's case, it
was depakote.

Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com

Just read your story of your mom and want to pass along some info of a
product that has had great results. Am attaching a story of a woman
that started with dimentia leading to alzheimer's. I am a distributor
but am a user of this product. My wife and I have both had life
changing results. The first thing that this product would do (not a
drug) would be to eliminate the tired feeling and restore energy. Here
are a couple of stories and if you are interested please e-mail.
Life Changing

"After a series of strokes followed by a major stroke in August 2002,
I was left with my face paralysed, I was unable to speak, and
suffering memory loss." says Marama Dey, of Wanganui, New Zealand.

"I was so ill, I had to give up my management position in a large
community organisation, and was sent to a rehabilitation farm in
Taupo. It was there a visiting friend introduced me to Relìv Now,
which helped in my recovery and gave me enough energy to get out of
bed and get mobile again."

"Now a year later, I am almost fully recovered from the effects of the
strokes, and feel my immune system has been strengthened by my daily
intake of Relìv." Marama explains. "I also no longer suffer the
fatigue and stress associated with the strokes."

"My life has taken a different direction because of Relìv. I've been
so happy with my recovery using Relìv nutrition that I have to tell
everyone. I became a Relìv distributor and now earn a good income with
my part-time home based Relìv business. I'm very grateful to my friend
for introducing me to Relìv."

December 28, 2006

Alzheimer's Story

Since 2002 and possibly earlier, my mother,  showed signs of dementia
that worsened over time. She was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's by
the University California San Francisco Memory Center in Fresno,
California in September, 2004. In December 2004, she was moved into an
assisted living center within a locked facility in Grass Valley, CA.
Initially, she could still walk with a walker. She still read some and
loved to look at her many albums of photos and talk about the past. At
this point she had little short term memory of an hour ago and nothing
about the day before. By late 2005, she was no longer reading much and
stopped looking at her photo albums. She also was having more
difficulty in walking with her walker. Her depression was getting
worse and sometimes would angrily abuse the staff verbally and
physically. This situation continued to worsen and in March, 2006 she
fell three times in two days and was hospitalized twice, the last time
for aweek. The doctors would not release her back to the assisted
living center and she was moved into a full care long term
convalescent hospital in Grass Valley. She has been wheel chair bound
ever since.

By April 2006, her depression had become very high, she had become
anti-social, lost her ability to speak more than a word or two most of
the time. If she could remember the word, she would seldom remember
what she wanted to say. Her short term memory was still gone and now
her long term memory was very minimal. It was very difficult to get
her to smile and she almost never participated with anyone else at the
hospital.
About late September 2006, we approached the hospital dietitian and
her personal medical doctor about putting her on the RELIV products.
They reviewed the product labels and agreed the RELIV products should
be beneficial for her. It was a food supplement and it should not
interfere with her medications. The hospital staff also made a very
significant commitment that she would receive a morning shake and an
afternoon shake as part of her daily medication procedure. Each shake
had one scoop of RELIV NOW, ½ scoop Innergize, one scoop Fibrestore.
We recently switched the RELIV NOW to Kids Now, but the RELIV NOW
seemed to be working just fine. The Fibrestore also helped with her
with not being constipated.

The results  have been phenomenal. Within the first month, her
depression was significantly reduced, she began to find the word she
wanted to say as well as complete some sentences more often. She
started
recalling some long term memory, especially when she started looking
at her photo albums. She seems to be in less pain and thus requires
less pain medication.

Now, after almost three months, she is no longer on depression
medication, she has regained her famous smile, her long term memory
has expanded significantly, and she now remembers things that happened
yesterday and even a few days ago. She wants to be around people more
and is beginning to do some group activities with the staff. We can
once again carry on small conversations with her. She is again
remembering and talking about friends of ours that she knows from the
past. She also is enjoying the hospital cat much more now and the cat
stays in her room most of the time, including sleeping on her bed. She
is also back to feeding herself all of the time and she often eats the
full meal.

The convalescent hospital staff has also noted the significant changes
in her mood, her smile, health, social interaction with them and
others, as well as what was written above.