Utopia is some place elsewhere

We leave bright and early tomorrow for the land of milk and honey and "itsy bitsy teeny weeny" bathing suits. The extended forecast shows temperatures for the duration of our stay above 25C except for one or two days of 21C (maybe I should take a parka to wear, like the locals do). It will be great to get away from the snow and cold for a few weeks and even coming home won't be terrible; the extended forecast for our city shows temperatures hovering around 0C upon our return. Positively balmy!!

I am hoping the warmth will be an asset because the cold is anything but. I now suffer from Raynaud's phenomonon - cold extremities to the point of pain (I believe I have mentioned this before but I hadn't a name for it.) When I go outside, even the warmest mitts ("garbo's" for those in the know) can't keep a few of my fingers from turning white. I wondered if Raynaud's was associated with PD, so I searched and I found the following statistics:

Raynaud's phenomenon is discoloration of the fingers, toes, and occasionally other areas). A report dated January, 29, 2014: 15,873 people who had parkinson's disease were studied. Among them, 7 (0.04%) had Raynaud's Phenomenon.

Females with both PD and RP made up 54.55% of the people and males 45.45%

Nobody below age 50 suffered from both, but between ages 50 - 59 20% suffered from both and over age 60, 80% of participants had both.

To read more about the study, click on the link above, but it appears there may be a small chance of a link between parkinson's and raynauds, especially past age 60, a group in which I belong. The hits just keep on coming, don't they! What's next? I hope there will be some relief in the heat.

I read in an earlier entry that I considered myself optimistic. I must have been having a good day. I certainly try to be optimistic but, in truth, I fall somewhere between optimism and pessimism on the outlook scale, leaning toward optimism.

I also wrote about suicide. I must have been having an OK day. It is not a subject I like to dwell on, unless it helps others, or I find something odd but interesting about the subject. For example, some one told me that at one time in England, attempted suicide was considered a crime punishable by death!

That's all I got for today and I must go and take my medication which I should have taken 2 hours ago.