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They have increased her trazadone to 50 mg twice a day, she acts like a zombie. Just sits in a chair all day. She has been in the home for 5 years, steadily declining. She is on blood pressure medicine, heart medicine, thyroid medicine, and diabetes medicine. Isn’t this keeping her alive in a condition she never would have wanted? As POA, can I request stopping all life sustaining medication?

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I don't understand why she's on Trazodone. Low dose is for help sleeping and higher doses is an antidepressant. 50 mgs is a sleeping aid dose, so no wonder she's like a zombie! I took that med for about a week, as a sleep aid, and I was SO tired and spaced out the next day that I couldn't function. Speak to her doctor immediately about the purpose of Trazodone in her life!

Ask for a hospice evaluation too, the doctor can write an order for one.

Best of luck.
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ElizabethAR37 Dec 1, 2024
Medication reactions are so individual. I had a paradoxical reaction to trazodone--very agitated and jittery. I hope never to take it again and have placed it on my "medication allergic reactions" list.
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You can request stopping all medications, sure. But they aren't what is sustaining life.
What is sustaining life now is food, and water, and indeed in minimal amounts. It takes nothing to make us live on for a long long time.

It is time for you to see a palliative care MD and a gerontologist, to make the decision to stop medications that aren't in her best interests. HOWEVER, as you might suspect, that won't include the trazadone. The fact may be that without this she is uncomfortable, confused to the state of discomfort, out of control and unmanageable. That can't be--right?

So what you need now is expert guidance. You will make it clear (if this is so) that she would not wish to live on in this condition. That this is a time for comfort care and care and medications that are designed not to make her live LONGER but to live BETTER and more comfortably. If the T. can be cut--great. But if it results in agitation--NOT great, right?

Work with the medical in charge of her care. Good luck. You know what she would have wanted were she competent. You as POA will now do your best to see that that is the way of things to the end.
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I would ask for a hospice consult
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Reply to anonymous144448
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You can ask for hospice, if approved they will take her off every thing.

I'm so sorry, this must be so horribly hard. 😞
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