Unusual reaction to medication

[Lou117]

My 81 year old Mum has quite advanced MSA. She is chair bound and her speech has been very severely impacted. She has recently seemed unwell and I was concerned that she had a chest infection. Her GP saw her and assessed that her chest was clear but gave her a new medication to try that might help with fluid in her throat - Scopolamine in a patch.

She became even more unwell, very confused and weak and ultimately became very distressed and appeared to be hallucinating. It was a scary experience for her and everyone.

She was visited by an Out of Hours GP who assessed that she probably did have an infection and that possibly she was also having an adverse reaction to the Scopolamine.

I immediately removed the patch and he prescribed her antibiotics.

Thankfully she has now improved considerably. She is tired and weak but no longer confused or behaving strangely.

But the strangest thing is this - for the 24 hours she was most poorly (she has absolutely no recollection of this period) she was moving her arms and legs in a way she hasn’t been able to for at least a year, probably 2. She was reaching out far with her arms, she twice managed to get her legs over the high side of her hospital bed. She was gripping my hands and arms extremely tightly. She wriggled to the bottom of the bed. She was making stepping movements with her legs while she laid in bed. She absolutely cannot do any of these things any more and as she recovered and calmed down she can’t do them again.

Has anyone any experience of anything similar? It was so very strange to see. I didn’t think too deeply about it at the time because I was so worried about her but on reflection it was extraordinary.