Good morning how are you good how are you good my name is mackenzie i’ll be the nurse taking care of you this morning i just wanted to provide a little bit of education on the new medication you were given this morning for your parkinson’s disease okay so i do have this handout for you it has all the information that we’ll be discussing on it so you can refer back
To it afterwards okay okay so the medication that you were given is called levodopa carbodopa it’s also known as cinemat and the goal of this medication is to treat and lessen the symptoms that you’re having with your parkinson’s disease so the tremors the muscle rigidity and the lack of balance and the way that this medication works so with parkinson’s disease
You’re missing something called dopamine within your body it’s a chemical it helps regulate a lot of things within our body and one of those things is our muscle strength our ability to use our muscles and so this medication is used to replace that dopamine so that it you can regain that muscle movement okay so it’s typically prescribed as a pill that you will
Take with water you can take it with or without food that’s totally up to you just know that if you do take it with food make sure that the food is low in protein protein can affect that the way the medication is absorbed within the body okay and then i do want you to be aware that it does take a little while for the medication to kind of kick in and for you to
See the effects of it they say about six months so for the first six months don’t get discouraged if you don’t completely see a difference with the medication a few other things that i do want you to be aware of with this medication there are some adverse effects one of those is called orthostatic hypotension it happens when you stand up too quick and your blood
Pressure drops really fast so it can cause dizziness it can cause you to fall and so we just really want to prevent any falls in any injury for you so if you do feel dizzy when you stand up we want you to just sit back down until you don’t feel dizzy and just try and stand up slowly especially when you’re laying down maybe sit up for a couple of minutes before
You stand up completely and just before you start walking make sure that you aren’t dizzy and so that way you can prevent falling another thing that we want you to be aware of this isn’t necessarily something that you need to call the physician about but it will change the color of your urine and your sweat it’ll make it darker so we don’t want you to be alarmed
When that happens just know that that typically happens with this medication okay okay um a few other things it can cause your tremors and your involuntary movements that you have to be increased so that’s an adverse effect so if that does happen we want you to call your doctor okay and he’ll either change the dosage or change your medication because that’s not
Something that we want for you okay and then a few other things just to be aware of it can cause nausea and vomiting and it can also cause hallucinations so if you experience any of these call your physician okay do you have any questions about any of this no okay well like i said i had this handout for you so you can refer back to that it’s a lot of information
To take in at once and you can always call our office if you have any questions or concerns regarding this this medication okay okay thank you thanks for your time
Transcribed from video
Client Education Video – levodopa/carbidopa (Sinemet) By McKenzie Draper
