Dragging leg and arm

[tready11]

My husband had a silent massive heart attack almost 10 years ago, with a resulting loss of about 2/3 of his heart function, cardiomyopathy & congestive heart failure. He had a 3 way pacemaker implanted a year later, with a defibrilator, pacer & synchronizer of the bottom ventricles of the heart. He is on maximum medication and has been doing relatively well until about 2 months ago when he started noticebly dragging his right leg and not swinging his right arm. He is also loosing function in his right hand.  His cardiologist did a CT scan of the head which was normal, ruling out stroke or brain bleed. His bloodwork was normal. A nuclear stress test has been done & we will receive those results in 2 days. Any thoughts on what could be causing this new symptom? He takes Coreg, Cozaar, Lipitor, Digoxin, Nexium, Niaspan & Allopurinol.

[gmachris518]

If your husband has a 3 lead pacemaker/defib, then he might be suffering from a blockage in his main arteries and needs to have the balloon treatment to open it back up.

The new pacemaker/defib is notorious for causing a blockage, due to the leads being inside of the artery leading to the heart,  

I have a paceMaker/defib and have been told there will come a day when it could cause a major blockage and have to be removed, and a new one intstalle......so far I've been fortunate.

I do hope the best for you and your hubby.

[LadyF]

Check out the side-effects of Lipitor.  That particular statin has a lot of side-effects, some very serious.  There is a website (not sure of the web address but you can Google it) called Stopped Our Statins.  There is a lot of good information on there.  I would look at the side-effects of the Lipitor before panicking that it might be something else.  There are many new statins out there that don't cause so many side-effects.  Hope this helps.

[Jenn724]

I really hate to say this, but those are early signs of Parkinson's Disease. I have listed the "checklist" of early warning signs below. I hope this is not the case, but the earlier it is diagnosed the better,

When a reader of my blog asked about the early warning signs of Parkinson’s Disease (PD), I was caught off guard. I know what full-blown PD looks like, but I’d forgotten what PD might look like before it may even be diagnosed. With a little research, here's a list of the early signs and symptoms of PD:
Change in facial expression (staring, lack of blinking)
Failure to swing one arm when walking
Flexion (stooped) posture
"Frozen" painful shoulder
Limping or dragging of one leg
Numbness, tingling, achiness or discomfort of the neck or limbs
Difficulty with small motor functions of the hand (such as handrwriting, eating)
Handwriting becomes smaller and increasingly difficult to read
Softness of the voice
Subjective sensation of internal trembling
A tremor when limb is relaxed (about 25% of patients, however, will not have a tremor)
Symptoms on one side of the body
Loss of sense of smell
Constipation
Depression
Anxiety
Unfortunately, there is no diagnostic test that can confirm Parkinson's disease. Laboratory testing of the blood of patients with the symptoms typical of Parkinson's only rarely uncovers any abnormality.
The MRI and CAT scans of the brain of people with Parkinson's disease appear normal. The brain of people with Parkinson's disease appears normal.
The brain changes that create neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's are microscopic, on a chemical level, and are not revealed by these scans.

Best of luck, I hope I haven't scared you, I feel almost guilty posting this. I hope that I am way off base. The only reason I even posted is my grandfather had this so the dragging leg caught my attention, It was the first symptom he showed.