besides your laundry,what the heck else am I supoposed to be doing?

"Jacqueline D. Richardson" wrote:

> Hi, I've been reading the digests for a few days now and thought I would do an intro since I'm going to have many questions to ask.
>
> During the past two years, my 49 y/o husband saw a general practitioner, a rehab doc, a useless stint in physical rehab, numerous visits with our excellent chiropractor, another spell with a different physical rehab group, a visit with an orthopedic doc complete with x-rays and lower back MRIs, a couple of extensive half day visits in the Spine Center complete with evaluations with rehab therapists and a couple of visits with the back surgeon and finally a visit with the neuro doc and more x-rays and head and neck MRIs, and was finally diagnosed with PD. His symptom, that had everyone totally baffled and giving up on him, is that he was dragging his left leg and when he gets tired it is more pronounced and by the end of the day his leg will ache. Now this is a guy that has legs that are rock hard muscle without an ounce of fat on them because he is extremely active and does so much walking (he is an avid outdoorsman/hunter - sorry - that sometimes isn't very politically correct to
> admit...) so it wasn't like he was out of shape. He had also been having a lot of pain off and on in his left hip (sacroilliac joint) and his sciatic nerve which he thought was connected to the leg drag. What no one (and I'm embarrassed to say, me included) had noticed and was finally picked up on by the neuro doc was that his left arm just hung when he walked - it didn't swing like his right arm.
>
> The (not so) funny part is that I work in Administration at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire and I kept telling my husband that I didn't think the message was getting from his brain to his leg, but I couldn't get him an apointment in Neuro because in Neuro you can't self-refer, you have to be referred by another doc... So, we went through all of the above which was very frustrating and a total waste of time and MONEY.
>
> Anyway, his neuro doc had him take 1 Sinemet 25/100 twice a day for 3 weeks. There wasn't any improvement so the doc had him doubled it for ten days. There was a slight improvement in his stride, but the arm still just hung there. Last week the doc added two more 25/100 Sinemet's at noon time for a total of 6 a day. The stride is better but the arm still hangs. Also, since the addition of these last two pills he has had occasional uncontrollable twitching/jerking of his left hand/arm and also had a brief (few minutes) spell of light headedness and sweating. I am going to e-mail the doc these latest developments and see if I can talk to him myself because my husband doesn't ask any questions or offer a whole lot of info when he talks to the doctor.
>
> Right now he has sort of accepted that he has it, but he really doesn't want to know what to expect beyond today and he is very content to have me do all the research and educate myself so he doesn't have to so I just dole out the more positive things I find out and keep the rest to myself. If he gets to the point of wanting to know more I'll share it with him but right now this seems to be the way he needs to handle it so I'm respecting that.
>
> This intro has gotten quite long so I'll save my questions for my next post. Thank you all for listening.
>
> Jackie in VT
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