My 92 yo Dad's primary care was trying to help us get something resembling a complete night's sleep by prescribing something to make the night trips to the bathroom less numerous. First he prescribed alfuzosin. If anything it made even more trips at night. We were given a couple of side effects to look out for. What was not mentioned and what we noticed was that over a period of a couple of days he became more and more confused and made life even more difficult. The problem is that he has Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and you could also say that was the next level down of those diseases. Anyway, he finally reached a point that I made the decision to stop that drug. It was doing absolutely nothing to cut the many, many trips to the bathroom, so why take it. Within 24 hours he was probably 50% back to where he had been and about 75% back two days after dropping the drug. At his next appointment, his primary care then prescribed Tamsulosin. Dad then went into another slow decline and still needed many trips (10 - 15) to the bathroom thru the night. I would notice in the mornings that you almost had to prop him up in his seat to eat breakfast. He looked like a diabetic with blood sugar of 700. I made the decision to drop Tamsulosin and once again he showed great improvement within 48 hours.

I thought I would pass it on. The specific point is that, along with my previous post on COPD drugs, I am amazed at the extreme side affects drugs can have. I have never run into that before, but granted before was just things for the flu or an infection. When you get into some of these other conditions, some of the drugs can really blindside you. I am not sure what the experience is in other parts of the country, but here my experience is that you call in to a doctor and you might get a return call in two or four days. You really need to look out for yourself and drop drugs without doc's permission when they are doing bad things. The particular drugs put him at much higher danger of falls and I could not see anything but danger from waiting a couple of days for a call. The second thing is that it is always good to have a spouse, friend, etc. know what is going on so they can monitor you and demand or make changes if bad things result from a drug. Those are the kind of things that it is impossible to recognize in yourself because they cause deterioration of your mental state.

He has a nurse that comes weekly to check on him and I had observations to support my position that the drugs were untenable. There has been no pushback from quitting drugs without doc's permission. If there had been, I would have changed doctors. I always try to be very clear on communicating the situation with the other parties.

Kudos to you for caring enough. Those strong family ties seem to be diminishing at an alarming rate today. I've taken Flomax for years and it seems to work ok. I might get up a couple times, maybe as many as 4, depending on much liquid I consumed close to bedtime, but never as much as your Dad.

An interesting one, my doc has just put me on Cialis for the same problem, it supposedly relaxes the death grip of the prostate on the urethra. I have so far taken 2 doses and you are supposed to take it for about a week before it really kicks in. I will report back as time goes on as to whether this works or not.

micdavi24 (imported) wrote: Sun Apr 05, 2015 6:26 pm An interesting one, my doc has just put me on Cialis for the same problem, it supposedly relaxes the death grip of the prostate on the urethra. I have so far taken 2 doses and you are supposed to take it for about a week before it really kicks in. I will report back as time goes on as to whether this works or not.

That is interesting, lose prostate and erect penis!

jcat (imported) wrote: Mon Apr 06, 2015 2:44 am That is interesting, lose prostate and erect penis!

I hhad to quit due to financial constraints as I simply can't afford $165.00 for a month's supply. I had a week's supply as a sample and it did work.