Hi, i am not quite sure where to post this, but i am so worried about my husband. First off I am disabled with MS 63. I have help during the week, and cope really well. Part of my history, my grandfather had PD, and my father had lupus and a neurological disorder not diagnosed by the time of his death.
So I am not a stranger to how PD affects people.
Going back to my husband. He is 69 still works and has COPD. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Yes he still smokes.
He is a very fine engineer but now too ill to travel so is office based.
Over the last five years he complained several times of struggling with his hands. His left in particular he couldnt hold an item whilst using the screwdriver and lost feeling in his fingers and had pain in his wrist. Anyway the doctors diagnosed Carpal tunnel and operated. He still cant feel 2 of his fingers in this hand and had developed a small tremor in this hand. I just ignored it so did he.
He does get a lot of chest infections and is always ill, but of late i would say in the last six months he is declining rapidly but the symptoms are different.
I noticed a change in his mood very depressed, and he seems confused a lot. He is constantly cold, and will sit on top of our gas fire, then the next minute he is sat in our conservatory with the door wide open in the cold complaining he is too hot.
He is constantly tired out and has been falling asleep at work, and when he pops home from work he has to sleep. (He has been checked for diabetes all ok).
He struggles somedays to even speak and swallow and came home the evening and his voice was so low i could hardly hear him. He said he had been struggling with his voice all day. I am struggling to hear him now as he talks so low and i have bad hearing anyway i miss a lot of what he says. I said to him why cant you talk properly he said he struggles to swallow and speak at the same time or something....not sure what he means.
In the last 8 months i noticed his hands shaking both of them, just discernable, and he said it was starting to get on his nerves and it was taking him ages to do things.
In the last month i would say this shaking has got so bad I had to literally cut his toast for him. 2 days ago he was holding the T.V. remote and it flew out of his hands. He was trying to repiar a remote yesterday and his hands just shook constantly. This has been noticeable like I said more in the last month i suppose and yesterday his hands just shook and shook and for 2 days he has jerks now too. It gets worse if he extends his wrist and you can see his hands shaking. He also told me the right one shakes when he is sat quiet watching the t.v.
He has been complaining at night he cant sleep, because he gets leg cramps. During the day he walks like an old man and is kind of bent over when he is walking and he walks like a 90 year old man.
He has lost tons of weight, is 5ft 11, and now weighs 8st 6lb. He says he has no appetite and sometimes finds food hard to swallow and it all tastes funny.
His balance is scaring me. I have poor balance, but he beats me. He couldnt even put his jeans on the other morning and he fell over thankfully he landed on the chair. When he gets up he wobbles all over the place and has to grab onto things.
There are other issues the fatigue is bad, his memory is terrible, he is changing personality and seems somedays to be a bit confused. He has also developed urinary urgency and complains constantly he is constipated.
Now I have begged and begged him to see the doctor for the last month he refuses. He looks old and frail and even my family are shocked at his appearance, and his son came over the other day and was shocked too, as he hadnt seen him in about 4 weeks and he was amazed at the change in him in such a short time.
I expect you are wondering why i am here, but he reminds me so much of my grandad when he was in late stages of his PD. Its shocking me and scaring me.
Could he have Parkinsons? Whatever it is it seems to be rapid right now. I know he gets really bad bronchitis but i have never seen him like this.
When i look back there are lots of little signs over the last 5 years but always put down to his COPD.
I need him to go to doctors. I was almost pulling my hair out watching him struggle yesterday with this remote this is an engineer who can fix anything, spent ages trying to fix this remote because of the shaking. I have noticed things do take him so much longer to do, although some of that is his COPD as he cant breath very well.....but his actions seem very slow.
I am on the verge if he has another bad attack i might just ring the ambulance but feel that would be wasting valuable resources. I CANT FORCE him to see the GP. He simply wont go.
Any advice would be so welcomed. Maybe I am way off base on this and i know yhou will be able to tell me if i am or not, and if i should force an issue for his own safety. I am worried he will fall and hurt himself.
Funny enough 2 years ago he came into my bedroom at night and said his back hurt. I made him turn around and he had the biggest bruise on his back i have ever seen. i asked him what on earth had he done he had no clue. I got him to hospital and he had broken a rib. In the morning i found in the sitting room a broken vase it looks like from the evidence he had a black out or something or fell and hit the low table hard. We have had another one of these black outs. Are they part of it? I dont know.
I hope someone can help me, this is stressing me out and making my MS so much harder to cope with, i cant sleep for worrying about him. I totally appreciate your not doctors but you might recognise some of the symptoms.
Thank you so much for reading my essay. MERRY XMAS and thank you again for taking the time to read this. GG51.