WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

Something is happening.  I don't know what it is, but I can tell you this: I don't like it and and I'm  as positive as any patient-who-believes-she-is-can-diagnose-as-well-as-her-doctor that it has something to do my Parkinson's Disease.  All of a sudden, I am having difficulty walking.  My nose arrives about a foot before the rest of me because I've started to tilt forward when I walk.  And, my whole body moves at 35 degrees forward.  Also, I stumble.  I stubbed my toe two times - the same toe.  Finally, I shake. My hands tremor at times. I cannot type.  Even if the tremors are light, they still interfere with things.  When typing, one of my fingers will randomly drop and one will hit some  random key  At other times the tremor is so severe I cannot type at all.  I don't know what these things are all about, but I know that Parkinson's does these types of things.

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I wrote the above a week and a half ago. This morning, I sat in Bob's office and wept.  I was trying to do last week's work for my on-line course in labor law.  I don't know all about the subject matter, but,as a lawyer, I certainly know how to read the law and apply it to the fact situation.  Except this last week-end.  For three days, I tried to form an answer to the first question.  I identified five issues and knew what laws applied.  But I couldn't begin to combine the issues and the law.  I sat in front of this very computer and couldn't type a single word.  Not one.


I told Bob that this just wouldn't be.  That I just wouldn't live in a world where my brain was confused and I could hit my daughter's aquarium with the car and have nary a clue about what I did.  I'm tired of forgetting words and names; of tripping on the stairs.  I told him about how I kept each of my kids' schedules in my head, never having to write any of it down.  I told him about how two years after I left the law firm, one of my partners called me to ask a question about why the plan's loan policy was written like it was. I read it and quickly said, "Oh yeah!  I remember.  We wanted to do XX, but we couldn't do XX.  so we did YY which yielded the same result.  He couldn't believe that I remembered  that.

And neither could Bob.  I sat there with tears trickling down my cheeks and explained how my brain just wouldn't do what I needed for it to do.  There have been times in the past that Bob has marginalized what I've said about my brain, telling me that sometime he, too, can't remember things or that he, well,... I don't remember, but there was something.  This time he told me that the stages of grief don't apply just when we lose a loved one or a pet.   Rather, he  legitimatized the way I felt.  He went through some of the stages of grief.  When he got to "anger"  he asked me who I blamed for what was happening me.  I told him no one - no one raced by me with a PD stick and struck me.  Nor did God look down from above and smite me with Parkinson's Disease.  The fact of the matter is "crap happens."    Bob was thrilled that that was my opinion.  I already conquered one of the elements!

Bob didn't stop there though.  He qualified what he knew about Parkinson's, but wondered why these symptoms appeared so quickly - questions I didn't consider.  Other of his clients with PD seemed to progress much more slowly.  We then discussed a new antidepressant that my psychiatrist prescribed for depression.   As we talked, and examined the side effects of my new prescription, Bob noticed that not only were the symptoms I have relevant to Parkinson's, they were side effects of the new drug!


So I don't know.  I want to hope that it's just side effects - easily fixed.  But I don't want to be disappointed.  If this jumbled brain is here to stay, I won't be able to deal with it.  It will be a very long, lonesome, dark, scary journey and, I'm going to rely on Bob to talk me through it.  He's serious and focused.  He insisted (not  wished)  that I contact my psychiatrist ASAP.  I've done that - so now we'll see.

G