Zocor and chest pains

On my second night of taking Zocor I got severely ill. I was so weak I had to crawl to the bathroom and I started having severe chest pains with a burning sensation of the skin where the chest pain was. It felt like putting Ben-Gay on a scrape. Needless to say I won't be taking that anymore.

I'm a 64 year-old retired pilot. I've had a form of rheumatoid arthritis for years. Recently I had chest pains & breathlessness when walking the dog & going uphill. Cholesterol was 6.8 so, prior to an Angiogram next month, I was put on 20 mg of Simvastatin about 5 weeks ago. The Cholesterol went down to 4.4 but I gradually began to feel quite ill with dreadful tiredness & lethargy, feeling low & depressed, not wanting to do anything, With chest pains & breathlessness worse than before. Joint & muscle pains were now really bad and I felt tender all over. Yesterday I felt very nauseous, with stomach tightness, dizzyness and a strange feeling of "unreality" and restlessness. I had lost interest in life, couldn't sleep & was quite ill. I could barely walk!

The last time I felt anything similar was 20 years ago when I got Shingles and the doctor (not the same one) prescribed Zovirax tablets. Boy, I was nearly suicidal then and "afraid" to hear the doorbell or the phone go. This was not good in an Airline pilot so I flushed the tablets away, saw my doctor (who only then read me the side-effects) and vowed to be very careful in future.

I saw my (excellent) doctor today; he immediately took me off Simvastatin, agreed that I was quite normal but probably just on one side of the bell-shaped curve of human responses to this drug. He took blood for a liver function test, checked blood pressure (normal) and listened to my heart and chest (all OK). He recommended a "Statin holiday" and said he may try me on another, different form (much fewer side effects) of the drug. I slept a lot all day today, couldn't eat at all except for an orange (still nauseous), felt the lower back pain still and was generally fairly ill. However, I think now (at nearly midnight and without taking my nightly pill) that I am beginning to feel a whole lot better!

I can live with the high Cholesterol (since all other factors in my life are good) but I cannot live with Simvastatin. Simple as that. You are not alone!

I've been on Zocor for over two years. I have been getting muscle pain in almost every part of my body. I recently developed severe chest pains. I was sent for all kinds of tests with no results. My right thumb has become stiff and very painful, I can barely sleep at night. I told my doctor I suspected the Zocor. She disagreed but agreed to take me off for a while to see what happens. My chest pains have subsided, although my thumb is still painful and stiff.