How high's my problem mama? 6 feet high and risin'

I will get to the PD after I get this off my chest. We bought a house that is suitable for a PWD - ie - it is a bungalow. It has all been re-modeled into a modern, open-spaced, window filled area. In the basement there is a large family room, bathroom and bedroom. Here, only the bathroom was made current but the other spaces (except for a large storage space) had new carpeting but an older ceiling. My wife had the ceiling and its lighting re-done because there was not enough light so she added 10 or so pot lights and it looked great.

Before buying the house, we hired an expert to inspect it. He did a relatively good job, so we entered the deal with eyes wide open. We knew we would have to put some money into the place and we did; but, we didn't get around to replacing the crumbling window wells. You know what it's like. It's the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer and we live on the prairies, which are hot and dry. No worrying about window wells. The window wells will be repaired before winter, before they fill with snow. The house was perfect. We knew all its warts but we happily bought it and moved in. It was all we expected; not only was it nicely renovated, it was located in a safe, friendly neighborhood and it would serve me weill, if I deteriorated to the point where stairs became a problem. We were happy. All was copasetic.

That is....until the day that the rains came down! torrential rains! on the Canadian prairies. We are used to hard rain during our summer when a convection thunder storm passes through but they last 10 or 15 minutes and pass on. This was a 1 in 100 year rainfall and our window wells filled up with water pushing against ancient windows that eventually began to leak and the leak became a waterfall. We tried our best to stop the invasion but to good end. Try stopping Niagara Falls. You get the picture? By the end of the rainfall, the carpet was wreaked and I was a PD wreck! The tremor in my right side was beginning to wander into my left. It settled down when we decided there was nothing we could do to stop the onslaught and we will get those window wells fixed and the windows replaced before summer ends.

The PD feeling of weakness was now in my left hand but no tremor...yet.

Coincidentally, I had an appointment with my neuro who prescribed L-dopa in addition to my other pills. Well, drug seemed not to do too much and oddly when I started taking them, my balance seemed to get worse. I wobble sometimes and yesterday I went for a long walk, the last 20 minutes of which were horrible. My right leg was not co-operating at all. I got in an argument with my gray matter. I would instruct my brain to rid me of this feeling of vertical vertigo and would get the response, "Stop yammering little man, I am the brains of this outfit and will do as I please." Try as I might, I could not get my right foot to stop scraping the ground. I tried all the tricks to no avail. I would stumble like a sailor three sheets to the wind. The last 200 meters took a good 10 minutes because now I was listing to the right and would have fallen but for the fact that the grounds of most backyards that abut the sidewalk are surrounded by 6 foot high fences which I used to stop a fall, which happened a couple of times.

I got home, sat on the front steps to get rejuvenated. After 5 minutes, I stood up and my brain took over again. I stumbled, grabbed at a vertical pole, but I was too far gone. I fell off the stoop face-first into my lawn. No harm done except my dignity was damaged. I got up, dusted myself off and went to my home office. I wasn't going let the bastard PD get me down. In the words of Michael J. Fox....

I have no choice about whether or not I have Parkinson's. I have nothing but choices about how I react to it. In those choices, there's freedom to do a lot of things in areas that I wouldn't have otherwise found myself in.