Reducing Rytary for dad with late stage Parkinson’s
Hi - my dad (75M) seems to be near the end of his fight with PD. Looking for anyone with similar experiences to chime in on how you dealt with situation.
My dad was diagnosed with PD 12 years ago. He’s been on a slow decline since. We moved him into memory care facility early 2025, he was hospitalized for 10 days in Nov 2025 from aspiration pneumonia and was discharged barely able to swallow. Subsequently we entered him into hospice back at his memory care facility thinking he only had days left, then he miraculously rebounded back to pre-hospitalization.
Unfortunately he’s been really struggling over past month. He sleeps for much of the day, but when he’s not sleeping he is restless and agitated. As result he tries to get up often (including at night) but is falling 5-6 times a day, and is bruised all over his body which is clearly causing him a lot of pain. He suffers from delusions and hallucinations non stop and my mom can barely understand him now.
He is on a lot of rytary (147.5/585 5x a day) and seroquel (200mg 3x a day). He just finished a round of antibiotics for suspected UTI.
Two days ago, The hospice nurse suggested putting him on morphine (0.5 ml 3x per day) to deal with the pain, and start to taper off both the seroquel and rytary until cessation. I read this as a way to let his disease take over and let him pass with as little pain as possible.
We think adding morphine and tapering off the seroquel makes sense and will likely move forward with that. The reducing Rytary part gives me some pause. Does anyone have experience with this with their late stage PD loved ones? How did your loved ones experience it? Would appreciate any perspective!!