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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