I see what I can do about getting one of those tests.

Apologies for my confusing posts. My main issue is trying to understand if the issue in the Once Upon a Pill book is one I should be concerned about. That is making sure my mother is not reducing her meds too quickly or too slowly. The Once Upon a Pill book seemed to suggest a 10 week recovery period after each dose decrease (in other words the dosage decrease is followed by additional complications and withdrawal symptoms, and starts to stabilize at 10 weeks with likely improvements at that point). Her neuro seemed to think the time period varies widely and can only be guessed at. The neuro thought 10 weeks seemed reasonable.

Once we hit 10 weeks and if she does not feel better I guess we will see at that point. Her mental functions have glimpses of being much improved. It's her weakness and energy that is at issue currently but by all indications that should improve.

My concern is the issue in the book, where the book says you may need to lower you dosage more quickly once your start to feel good (during the dosage decrease process) because its an indication that the dopamine levels are rising and her current dosage of Sinemet may start to be too much, even though it is less than the dosage your body had previously been accustomed to. I.e. if your endogenous dopamine starts to recover while your Sinemet dosage stays the same, you may be overmedicated again.

For example if someone is on 1000mg/day Sinemet and overmedicated, and cuts that daily dosage by 10%, she may have initial withdrawal symptoms and then start to feel good again. But the feeling good may just be a harbinger that the body is adjusting to 900mg. This is just like alcholol tolerance where if you are used to 5 beers in an hour, one beer is nothing; but to someone who doesn't drink one beer may be strong. The issue is if you are used to 10 beers/day with negative effects and cut to 5 for some long period of time, your body may recalibrate over time so even 5 is too much? Does this happen? Her neuro seemed to think that does not happen.

I guess they key here, if I am understand correctly, is whether your body is starting to recover or not? What constitutes recovery?