The Bells of Hell go Ting-aling-aling

I am sitting with my father in the care home. He is trying to tell me something but it isn't coming out. It is all nonsense, no real words, no structure, his hand waving in the air as if that will help. I pretend to know what he is talking about. He stops abruptly and says the first intelligible thing in a long time, "Ah, Doug," he sighs, "I have gone to Hell." He had momentarily looked out of his lost world and caught a glimpse of reality. But, it went away as quickly as it had arrived.

Altzheimers is like that. A life in hell with the occasional taste of reality.

I don't have Altzheimers, and I am glad of that. I doubt I ever will come down with it. I also doubt that I will ever come down with Pd related dementia. But still, I have my own personal hell.

Medications make my day relatively normal, but all PD medications are cloaking the fact that parkinson's continues to attack. Eventually the medication does not do a thorough job and the symptoms begin to return. You go along with your life, confident that the medication will keep the symptoms away (especially "the beast" found in my earliest entries)but you know there will come a time when a voice will say They're here . That voice has awakened me the past two nights.

The first night, I suffered a painful cramp in my right calf. It woke me up but I was able to ignore it and fall asleep. Not to be outdone, it attacked my left calf. This was the first time my left side has been victimized. I stood and the cramp left me. I had won.

The second night, my right leg shot straight out. The tibialis muscle, or whatever the muscle on the exterior of the leg is called, became rock-rigid and my toes began to curl down as my foot was in the process of curling inward and upward. The beast was back! I cursed and jumped out of bed. I stood for about 5 minutes until it let go of me. I got back into bed, still cursing and then, ironically, I remembered what somebody said, "you can talk all you want about your religion, but if it does not teach you to love the beast as well as mankind, your religion is a sham".

Well kids, I sure ain't lovin' that beast and nor am I too fond of old time religions that offer no explanations for the existence of the dainty hells found on earth.

Heathen: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Heathen: "Then why did you tell me?"