Excelon and early Dementia. Anyone else have parents on Excelon?

My 78 year old mom is on the Excelon patch, 13.3 mg. She uses it 4/5 days, but often skips a day because she says it bothers her skin. We try to make sure she isn't just forgetting to change it. She keeps telling me how thankful she is for the patch because her mom was so much worse at her age. I didn't realize there were pills, too.

I feel for you as far as your mom not taking her meds and telling different people different things...sounds just like my mom; we are steps away from getting her on the Elderly Waiver and Medicaid so we can get someone to come in and help her set up the meds and then come back to make sure she takes them. Do you think having a different person come in to do the meds would make any difference (if she can afford it)? My mom is also on a low dose of mirtazapine, which the doctor prescribed to help her sleep but is also to help improve her mood. The doctor increased the mirtazapine in July; I noticed a decrease in her frustration level during my last visit. Best of luck!

Well she threw out all of the Exelon last night. I'm going to giver her the Aricept until I hear from her Drs. She needs something to help with her combative behavior. I am not sure what to do! She tells different people different things. It's so confusing. And she's horrible with me so I try to avoid any interaction with her. She's living at home and I am her caregiver. My brother lives in the same city but doesn't understand that when he goes away to his place things "blow up" at home. I moved to her home after she was hospitalized last year.
I am at my wits end and finding the right medication is so stressful when she historically didn't take her Blood Pressure medications and other meds.
She's calm today or at least right now.

My Dad is prescribed the Excelon patch. His neurologist started him with the 9.5mg and then upped it to the 13.3 mg when it came out. He's been on the patch for about two years, I guess. I don't really know that it's caused any side effects, and I don't really know that it has helped him at all, but hopefully it has leveled off his symptoms so that he remains longer at his current stage of Alzheimer's. He's probably in the late mid-stage or early late-stage of the disease. Its so hard to tell sometimes because his symptoms seem to overlap. Dad has never fought any of the meds he's been prescribed. Early on he was prescribed Aricept, Namenda and Stalevo, one after the other, but he had so many side effects with each of them (most notably 6 weeks of continuous diarrhea with one of them!) that he was finally placed on Excelon along with another drug for Parkinson's-like symptoms. It's great that you are seeing a difference in your Mom when she takes the med. Perhaps not wanting to take it is just part of her combative behavior?