It's not exactly an attack, I just slowly drop off to sleep...like when your in a room without enough oxygen. I have been on .5, 3-4 X daily just increased to 6 and now to 8 in the next three months. I get to play with it a bit to see what works. Also I've been sleep deprived since giving up Remeron (Mirtazipine) which were causing the really bad tremor and hyperthermic melt downs out of nowhere. I now have a sleeping pill, a med I used to take so I think I know what to expect there. Anyway, I'm going to sleep tonight and should be able to think tomorrow. Yes I did have vision issues with the Mirapex, I get double vision if I'm too tired or dyskinetic. Doesn't happen often. I did notice a bit of upset stomach the first few days after I increased but that has eased up now. I will do the old log and diary thing for the next while and that will be things I will note. THis drug business is a pain in the butt. But the alternative is worse. Yes my tremor has improved since I upped my Mirapex. Hard to say how much of it was a Mirtazapine problem. I'll report in tomorrow.

Not too long ago an excellent psychiatrist who knows that I have a PD Dx mentioned Provigil as a way for PWP to deal with the "napping" tendencies also experienced by many of us not on DA agonists. Someone may have already mentioned that it is recommended for treating narcolepsy, a separate neurological disorder causing severe sleep attacks.

Add another drug?

Robert

you can always add another drug. I am looking around and think I would rather go the other direction -nutrition and supplements.It makes sense to me that if we give the body the nutrients it was intended to have in as natural an enviornment as we can provide we should run a little smoother. Just theory of course.

Yes, have had these attacks for some time. They started while I was on Requip and Amantadine, but have continued unabated after changing both of those. I don't drive any distance now, and when I do it is with someone that can tell me to pull over if I start to get that eyes-glazed-over look. You would think that a healthy sense of self-preservation would do the same thing, but I think it goes to sleep before the rest of me does.

I get quite a kick out of looking at something I wrote the day before and see a long line of vzcx,.dfdddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd in the middle of the page. A couple of emails got out that way without my noticing it until later. I just hope my correspondents believe that it is the internet doing something weird, which I think we are all willing to believe, anyway.

I do every once in a while drop off while talking with an employee - quite literally, while I am talking. They claim not to have noticed anything, but I can tell when I've been asleep because the thread of my statements has been hauled out the window and let fly on the breeze.

I'm taking Ambien now, and it works well, except that I tend to fall asleep sitting bolt upright on the sofa, and don't move a muscle until 6:00 AM or so.

Kris,
Have you been checked for Narcolepsy? "I do every once in a while drop off while talking with an employee". This is one of the classic indications of Narcolepsy.

Also check out this thread. http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...ad.php?t=21440

GregD

Yes the name of sudden drop offs is narcolepsy and you sure sound like a candidate. Of course the side line issue here is that all this sleep disorder stuff is a sign of aging, not just PD. We tend to view everything through the prism of PD and it's true that everything is connected and if you get a hangnail on your big toe someone, somewhere can connect it to your brain, particularly your lack of dopamine or your defunct dendrites or whatever.

I just had an idea for a fun thread ...mental exercise...

SHOES...
I've kept telling myself that I need shoes, lots of shoes, because my toes hurt. I was so sure that I had no obsessive behavior at all from Requip, but when you mentioned shoes, Rosebud, I realised that i'm addicted to shopping for shoes - just the right ones - lots of just the right ones. Fortunately for my budget I don't buy all the shoes I'd like to have, and fortunately shoes can be returned.
But I am hooked, I loooove shoes.

I also have sleep blips - with half second vivid dreams, so I wake up and have to stop myself from saying strange out-of-context things that have to do with the dreams. It's sometimes very funny.

Birte...you are not alone. And you don't have to be on drugs to be shoe obsessive. I have been to some degree all my life, and the men in our lives all think it's just their wives etc that are shoe obsessed. I used to work for a company that sold closet organizer systems and I'd go to peoples homes and if the husband was there he'd always say "my wife has a thing for shoes"...and I'd have to tell him that on an average, most women had between 35 - 70 pairs of shoes. Men do not wear colored shoes, and do not need different heel heights etc. Then of course there are those special shoes that "go" with a certain outfit. I attribute my fixation with shoes to having to wear OXFORDS the first 12 years of my life! My choices were brown or black! I've been making up for it for the last 45 years. I leave them all over the house too which is inconsistant with how I do things otherwise. I'm generally pretty tidy.

Birte-

Your mention of having to pause and get your bearings before speaking after one of these sleep blips ("slips"?) is exactly how I describe my own situation.

If it happens when I am trying to answer a question by a junior engineer, I'll end up muttering something like "Yes, I think that is the correct solution; go ahead and work with that," to hide the fact that I only half-remember what we were talking about. Not a good habit for an engineer!

Narcolepsy! Seems obvious, dunno why it didn't occur to me. Thanks.