While Levodopa is the “gold standard” drug for treating Parkinson’s Disease (PD), it also has a reputation for causing dyskinesia in patients who have been using it for several years. For this reason, many people (both patients and doctors) tend to delay Levodopa therapy as long as possible, using other drugs for the first few years after diagnosis. In my case, that other drug was Pramipexole (generic Mirapex).

I started taking Pramipexole (which I have nicknamed Prami) immediately after being diagnosed with PD. That would mean I started taking it in early 2015. The timing was interesting, as I had already planned a casino trip for the following weekend, and the doctor warned me that Prami sometimes causes impulsive behaviors – specifically in regard to gambling. When I arrived at the casino, I very quickly lost my life savings, my house, my dog, my sense of wonder, and all the hubcaps I managed to steal off cars in the casino parking lot. Not really. I gambled and lost a small amount of money – only the amount I had budgeted to lose. But not all was well. I was experiencing an anxiety that felt different from any anxiety I had previously experienced – definitely drug-induced. I called my doctor’s office to let them know about this awful side effect. (I didn’t mention to them that I was calling from a casino.) They advised that I should cut my daily dose in half for about a week, then return to the “full dose” – in other words, I needed to ease myself onto the stuff.

So ease I did. Once I had stabilized on the prescribed dosage (which took a couple weeks), Prami and I got along just fine…except for the incident where Prami decided to scare the crap outta me. Here’s how that joyousness went down: I was driving my car, in fairly heavy traffic, so not moving fast at all. Suddenly I felt kind of a numbness in the middle of my spine, and I COULD NOT MOVE. Fortunately, this was an instantaneous event, lasting no more than a second. Now I imagine that momentarily feeling paralyzed would be unsettling in just about any situation, but when it occurs while driving, well that’s just plain scary. This actually happened twice during my first year of Pramipexole use. It has now been at least five years since the second such incident; I’ve been on Prami that whole time, and nothing remotely like these two incidents has happened since.

I have more to say about my ongoing experiences with Prami, but I will leave that for a future post.