The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

U.N.C.L.E. - the union of newbies ceasing to live effortlessly.

Do you know that feeling you get when you have had a little too much to drink, (or for all you tea totallers out there, when you spin around a few times), and then you rise from where you were sitting or try to walk a straight line, and you kind of stumble?

Of course you do! We have all experienced that uncertainty a few times in our lives. We always recovered without any effort and went on our way.

Well, my life contract has been amended to add a clause requiring me to occasionally go through the experience and to have to exert some effort in the recovery phase. When I arise from sitting, I momentarily stumble about 25% of the time, without having been drinking or spinning. I always catch myself so I don't consider it a problem.....yet. If it does become a problem, hopefully L-dopa will keep it in check. I am avoiding L-dopa as long as possible because, it is thought that after prolonged use, L-dopa loses its effectiveness. Some experts deny this is the case. I figure, why take the chance? So I will continue on dopamine agonists until they no longer work. It is just the way things are - bad today, worse tomorrow.

Sounds depressing, so lets change the topic. Let's chat about dyskinesia!

The simplest definition of dyskinesia is "the inablility to control movements, characterized by spasmodic or repetitive motions or lack of coordination." Well, late last night, I experienced the mother of all spasmodic episodes. I was on my bed, in the gloamin of just drifting off, while listening to the BBC on the satellite radio, and was just entering sleep mode, when I was rudely awakened when all the muscles of my entire upper body decided it was time to release any pent up aggression they possessed toward me in one simultaneous giant twitch, shudder, tremor (one or all of them). A myoclonic spasm of the nth degree.

I have to conclude these twitches I have been experiencing are not the run-of-the-mill myoclonic spasms we all have visit us from time to time, but rather; I have been introduced to a form of dyskinesia. It is becoming a nightly event. I knew it might come at some point along my journey but I would have preferred not to have to welcome it so soon. Nothing is quite so sure as change in PD. That is the rule, but it is not my ruler.