We visited my husband’s neurologist yesterday for his semi-annual check in. While we were there she mentioned a new process for the delivery of medication that should be approved within the next few months. It is a pump in a patch that delivers carbidopa levodopa subcutaneously. The goal is to even out the delivery of the medication into a 24 hour schedule and to make it less work for the patients as they would no longer be taking pills 5 or 6 times a day. My husband has his med schedule on his phone and it seems like alarms are always going off, it would be nice to not have to worry about that anymore. My question for her was, what is the trade off?

The process involves a patch which holds a small amount of the medication, a pump, and microscopic needles that actually are the delivery system. The patches must be changed and relocated every couple of days, and need to be monitored to ensure that they are not causing skin irritation. Some of the test subjects developed infections, or nodules at the injection site. Placement of the patches and watching out for complications would fall to me since my husband has limited ability when it comes to self-care.   

This absolutely sounds like a great break-through for delivery of his medication but is this something we could work with? Currently my husband manages his meds on his own, if we change to this new system it will require a united approach. We need to discuss the possibilities and the ramifications. Is he willing to share control of this component of his journey and how would that look? And, honestly, do I have the capacity and the capability needed to support him in this change? Finally, would it make our lives easier or more complicated? Questions we both need to answer before we meet with his neurologist again.

For more about the studies and the pump itself, check out this article “Continuous Subcutaneous Levodopa Delivery for Parkinson’s Disease: A Randomized Study” on the National institute of Health website.