Good News Travels at the Speed of Dark but it keeps on coming!

Reader Michael pointed out this article (thank you Michael)

UVa researchers testing focused ultrasound to treat Parkinson's symptoms

The University of Virginia is leading the first effort to use noninvasive focused ultrasound to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Since 2011, UVa has been a center for research in focused ultrasound, the use of high-intensity sound energy to destroy damaged or diseased tissue. It has proved safe and effective for patients with essential tremor, officials said, providing an alternative to risky brain surgery.

Click Here!

Now researchers say they’re confident it could help treat a range of symptoms in Parkinson’s patients sometimes known as dyskinesia, including tremors and involuntary movements.

“Everybody wants a cure for Parkinson’s, but for the time being, this could be a big breakthrough in symptom management,” said Dr. W. Jeffrey Elias, who has headed several major studies in focused ultrasound.

UVa is collaborating with the University of Maryland — along with centers in Canada and South Korea — to test the effectiveness of the treatment on dozens of patients. Earlier this summer, UVa conducted the first focused ultrasound session on a Parkinson’s patient in the U.S.

Researchers at the University of Maryland conducted another trial one week later, said Dr. Howard M. Eisenberg, chair of the university’s department of neurosurgery.

Patients in the trials will go through several sessions between now and next year, Elias said. Typically, the patients are subjected to focused ultrasound beams for about 10 to 15 seconds at a time. The treatment is essentially painless, though patients have reported discomfort during long sessions.

The point is to interrupt an “abnormal circuit” that forms in Parkinson’s patients, Elias said. Doctors do this by directing more than 1,000 beams of sound deep inside the skull to a part of the brain smaller than a grain of rice.

“We’re able to do the type of treatment that would usually require making a hole in the head and inserting a probe,” Elias said. “We’re able to do this without making an incision in the head.”

Interrupting these abnormal circuits can relieve rigidity and tremors in patients, Eisenberg said.

From Culpeper Star Exponent March 31, 2016

Things are looking better!

An Israeli company, Insightec, has developed a new technique for controlling Parkinson's. Instead of going under the knife for brain surgery, the surgeon uses ultrasound and has met with success. Read all about it HERE. Ignore the advertisement header. The article is beneath it.

If you have had a bad day, this good news should brighten it up. Good news is always welcome, isn't it.

Onward and upward always.

“HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable. -Ambrose Bierce

I am considering becoming a hermit, at least to the point of avoiding social events. What's the use. My mind thinks brilliant thoughts (IMHO) but when I want to release those thoughts in the form of the spoken word, something happens that I really don't appreciate. I come out sounding like a moron because,

1. My voice gets soft and quiet and a person sitting across a table would have trouble hearing me
2. My head starts to spin and I can't find the words that show off my brilliance
3. A tremor appears in my jaw that causes me to stutter.

Of course this doesn't happen too often, only when I am in the company of people who are not my wife. Everybody understands that I have a condition and they are very polite as they try to appear not to notice the tremor, the loss of memory, etc, but I know what they are doing and I am embarrassed by my performance. Ergo, from now on, I may go to the social event and be alone with my thoughts because I am not going to open my mouth for anything but sustenance.

Dysarthria, meaning speech problems, is considered to be one of the major symptoms of PD. Estimates of the prevalence of dysarthria in the parkinson's tribe range from 60 to 90 percent of PWP suffering some form of speech impediment.

Here of the kinds of problems that can wreck the social life of a PWP:

• Reduced volume of speech which is usually the first change that takes place related to problems with speech. The person tends to speak too softly although he may feel that he is speaking in a normal tone of voice.

• Fading of voice where the initial speech starts in a strong voice but tends to fade as the person keeps on talking.

• Monotonous speech is when the person speaks in a flat voice, with no variation in tone or expression.

• Fast rate of speaking where speech is too fast, with words and sentences running into each other without a break, giving a rushed quality to the speech.

• Hesitation in speaking is when the person has problem in initiating speech, often due to difficulty in word finding.

• Slurred speech where the speech is unclear, with endings being trailed off or omitted.

• Voice quality may become hoarse or tremulous, or there may be indistinct articulation of words.

• Muffling of voice may be increased due to drooling.

• Repetition where there may be uncontrolled repetition of words or phrases while speaking.

“A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.” ― Dean Koontz, Velocity

I fear I am headed in that direction. But hey, what me worry!

Big "C", Little "c"

I first started seeing my dermatologist for reasons of vanity. He removed those purple spots that seem to pop up as we age. He is a chatty fellow with a fast draw with the liquid nitrogen spray. Each time I visit him, he hits me with the spray. I end up looking as if I have been in a street fight. But it works! Like magic the spots disappear. He is a good doctor but he is always late, usually because he is so thorough. Each visit he carefully goes over my body with a magnifying glass looking for melanoma, the Big "C". This time he found something. Not the Big "C" but a little "c" - basal cell carcinoma.

Apparently it is no big deal.

I wasn't surprised when he found it. From the time I was little, I spent too much time in the sun, usually producing an agonizing sunburn.

He is going to remove the little devil in a few days. The whole issue got me thinking of a study I had read (I think I mentioned in an earlier entry) about the relationship between melanoma and PD. The conclusion reached was a bit troubling. Try this little gem on for size:

June 6, 2011 -- People with Parkinson's disease are at increased risk for developing melanoma, a potentially fatal form of skin cancer, a study shows. The new findings appear in Neurology. Close to 1 million people in the U.S. have Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological disease marked by tremors and difficulty with movement and walking. The researchers analyzed 12 studies of people with both Parkinson's disease and melanoma. These studies were conducted from 1965 and 2010, and most had fewer than 10 people with both conditions. When compared to those without Parkinson's disease, men with Parkinson's were twice as likely to develop melanoma. Women with Parkinson's disease were 1.5 times as likely to be diagnosed with this form of skin cancer. Parkinson's disease was not associated with an increased risk of other types of skin cancer.

Read all about it.

Things change. I googled PD and basal cell only to find, on top of all else, research that suggests we have to be a trifle concerned about the little "c" as well. It turns out there just might be a connection between PD and basal cell. There is little evidence but there is some. I won't bore you with the details. You can read what I glanced at here.

Some people have all the luck. I am not complaining; I am just suggesting, with a hint of a whine, that lately all my luck has been a tad bad.

I surely won't be buying any lottery tickets until this run of bad luck is through with me. That would be akin to me paying a tax on stupidity.

Statistics - if you are interested

Top 10 Statistics for past week

• Canada 70
• United States 64
• United Kingdom 25
• India 6
• Germany 2
• Portugal 2
• Ukraine 2
• France 1
• Mexico 1
• Peru 1

PAGE VIEWS TO DATE = 47,789

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”Orhan Pamuk

I will get to the PD "stuff" after a short story.

Dog owners are a little crazy. I understand their passion. I have owned two dogs but I will never own another; it is too difficult when they die. And they are expensive. You could own a couple of good kayaks and an aluminum canoe with the amount you spend on a dog in a year. But this blog has little to do with the canines. It's the owners and their little bouts of insanity that cause me to put pen to paper.

An older neighbour dropped by and told me this story of woe. "My neighbour is going to build a 2 story garage. The second floor will be a granny suite. We petitioned the city to stop construction and we lost. My daughter and her little white dog live with me. He is a good dog. We don't want a 2 story granny suite beside us. Eventually granny will die and kids will be the occupants. We decided to move and we looked around for places. Some were too small. Some were too big or too expensive. We came to the conclusion 'WHY SHOULD WE MOVE? I MEAN WHY SHOULD MY DAUGHTER'S LITTLE DOG BE FORCED TO MOVE AND MAKE NEW FRIENDS?'"

A dog has friends?

Maybe. But, I doubt that the dog cares where it lives, as long as it lives with its owner.

People who treat their dogs like humans make me laugh; in a good way. I echo Johnny Depp who said “The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.”

Dogs are faithful creatures but they don't worry about "friends" or the future. Their happiness lies in being fed and petted. They don't fret about problems such as parkinson's.

And that, my friends, is what is called a "segue". Granted it is not a very good one, but I promised to write about our dark companion, so here goes.

If you haven't already done so, you should read Michael's comment on my last post. It talks about the benefit of intense exercise in our fight against our common enemy. I have always believed exercise is our best weapon, so let me give you this glimpse of my routine last week.

Sunday - run the tread mill - 2.3 - 2.5 miles in a half hour using speeds of 4 to 6 mph. I do short bursts of 6 mph and my heart rate soars into the high 170's to low 180's. I take a 60 second break and it quickly returns to the 130's. After that short rest, I aim to keep my rate in the low 150's. I hit 6 mph usually twice in the 30 minutes I devote to running. At the conclusion of the exercise, I am sweating buckets but, as they say, "nobody ever drowned in sweat" and I feel good.

Monday - One hour of exercise using 10, 12, 15 pound barbells, large and small exercise balls, bosu ball with black rubber tubing for balance and strength, a bullworker and a grey rubber exercise band. I don't get as intense a workout as I do on the tread mill, but it is still good and at 69, I look better than I did at 39, if you don't see the red spots and other barnacles of life.

Tuesday - half hour on the treadmill, a little slower, mostly 4 mph with occasional 5 mph. I cover about 2.1 miles.

Wednesday - repeat Monday

Thursday - day off

Friday - repeat Sunday

Saturday - I make a choice of running or exercise and occasionally, I use the stationary bike for 45 minutes at moderate speed.

The Result - touch wood. I am into my sixth year with no great change in condition. I was at the neuro's office on Tuesday. The appointment lasted less than 5 minutes. When he finished a cursory examination, his diagnosis was, "You look good. See me in 6 months" I left feeling pretty darn satisfied. I have lived with this condition for 5 years and I feel normal due, I believe, to exercise.

All this talk about elder exercise reminds me of Ellen's joke about her grandmother who started walking for exercise when she was 60. She just turned 96 and now they don't know "where the heck she is".

BTW - I had actually signed that petition. I had forgotten about it. It seems we lost. The granny suite will be built. There goes the neighbourhood (or, if you live south of the 49th, "neighborhood")!

A bientot.

Don't shake the small things

The agony and ecstasy of a quiet evening - how distress can conquer the medication

My hand didn't, I was going to say "start to shake", but that is not quite the right word. "Swing to and fro" is more accurate. It happened at bed time. I was calmly watching the hockey game on TV, lying in bed, killing time until my wife finished her nightly routine. As she does every time there is hockey, she moves to another room until the game finishes. I heard her set the security alarm, as she does nightly, and a few minutes later, the squeal of the alarm filled the house. l nearly filled my pants and my right hand started to tremble. My wife turned off the alarm and came to bed, explaining that after setting the alarm, she wondered if the patio doors were shut and to ease her mind, she pulled them to see if they would open.

Apparently they would.

After re-setting the alarm and explaining to the alarm company what had happened, she got out her ipad to play a game and get settled down. Having survived what would otherwise have been an embarrassing incident, I got up to empty my bladder when the screech of the alarm hit me as soon as I reached the hallway. "What the heck!" I wondered (in much more colorful words I confess). My wife explained that in re-setting the alarm, she had accidentally set the motion detector. My movement had triggered it. I just made it to the bathroom and she turned off the alarm. I was still, by some good fortune, conscious, but the episode had alerted my PD and the meds were no longer a firewall. The second alarm put my right hand in motion. It hung off of my wrist like some malevolent pendulum for a good 3 or 4 minutes, just enough time to convince me I was deteriorating quickly.

I wasn't. My team scored and my hand gave up trying to distract me.

After calming down, I was good and my wife used her charm to apologize to the alarm company and sort of, to me.

Much ado about nothing.

Behold how like a maid she blushes here!
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!

Nocebo you rascal

I have had Bob Dylan's song, Subterranean Homesick Blues repeating in my brain over and over so, as a tribute and an apology, I give you unedited, unabridged PD version of the research study in which I am enrolled and how it feels to me.

The Subterranean Parkinson's Blues

I'm in the laboratory
Livin’ in a test tube
He's in the hall way
Looking for the payday
Man in a white coat
Pen out, pent up
Says he knows the reason
Coffee in a black cup
Look out kid
It’s somethin’ you hid
You knew it then
But he askin’ you again
You better count from a hundred
By sevens if you can
Flat out right shout
Use a different pattern then
Try it by eleven
But you can't pass the ten

Get sick, think well
Take the meds without delay
Maybe this is normal
It seems slightly formal
perhaps a little carnal
The man says it's not time
Placebo, nocebo
It's got to be yes or no
A secret that he doesn't know
Looking for another way
Anticipates the judgment day
Look out kid
It’s nothing you did
Kicking up the beach sand
Shaking in the right hand
A wobble when you do stand
Bruising when you meet land
He reminds me to follow
I'm stalling in the quick sand

Noses supposes
no longer smell the roses
My thoughts safe in escrow
Living is a road show
I have to put my leg up
Shattering the man's cup
Look out kid
Everything you did
Straight from the commissary
Giving you a promissory
First pill to last pill
Try to hold your body still
I waffle through a landfill
Chairman wants the minutes read
I recite my poems instead
In spite of all the brainfall
I try to hit a home run
But he's tossing me a spitball

Sraight talk, bent walk
Prying hands from the clock
Prod me when I'm rest free
Take a shot of coffee
I'm a million miles away
Look out kid
Look under the lid
Don't guess at remedies
Let your body fidget
Late night sleep tight
Don't let the spiders bite
Now the day is in the can
Datum found and data ran
Let me know the things you see
Using a confession booth
He thinks it's level two PD
Don't believe so
It's shouting level one to me.

Life is a comedy for a thinking person

I have a few hours before the plane takes off and exactly 15 minutes to sunrise when I think I shall go for a final walk. It is about 21C here and -17C at home. I have got to have one last whiff of summer before returning to the land of snow and ice. So I am killing time with this discussion.

I think the heading of this post should be appropriate for a PWP. Think about it. Our brains are experiencing technical difficulties and we have qualities no other people have.

(Skip ahead. I have been back home for the past two days)

Have you ever been choked up over a TV show? Like that last episode of Downton Abbey. I found myself with a little lump in my throat when Edith found true love, etc, etc. However, I hated the ending, preferring endings such as in The Sopranos. But don't be ashamed if you felt weepy. It is just another of Parkinson's little joys. For example, my PD can instantly turn me into an emotional wimp. I can weep at the tragedy of a cut in the linoleum. I get choked up at the sight of volkswagons. I can dissolve into a helpless mess when reciting my ABC's. And damned if other symptoms don't surface - my right leg went into spasm when Carson was diagnosed with the shaking palsy. God! I hated that last episode! I didn't get emotional about a family that might have been whacked if The Sopranos had continued; so, why Downton Abbey? The emotions are not predictable. They creep up on you; but, if the conditions are right, you might get weepy at the sight of a monarch butterfly. Here is why.....

Pseudobulbar Affect is a symptom of Parkinsons

OH MY GOD, NOW WHAT? Don't panic. It is just a fancy word for "why am I so weepy?" and is recognized as a symptom of degenerative brain problems, including parkinson's. Skeptical? Well read on.

Yet quite often, Dr. Siddiqui—an assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery and director of the Parkinson's and Movement Disorders program at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN)—finds none of the other classic signs of depression. These include changes in sleep and appetite or loss of interest in usual activities. “You're not depressed,” he tells many of these patients. “You have pseudobulbar affect.”

References to pseudobulbar affect (PBA) date back more than a century. Naturalist Charles Darwin noted in 1872 that “certain brain diseases, such as hemiplegia, brain-wasting, and senile decay, have a special tendency to induce weeping.”

You can find the whole article here.

Hands up all of you PWP who are having fun now. Life is a comedy. I insist we enjoy ourselves, laugh at our PD problems. I mean who cares if Edith gets married? Chuckle at your new-found emotional distress. In the words of Dr. Seuss

"Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one."

.
One day at a time. Right Michael?

That brute, PD, is starting to get nervous

Three interesting videos for the tribe. I am telling you, a cure or a drug to halt the progression of PD (maybe that's as much of a cure as we can expect) is not far off.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En5HJBxstVk
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VViXZAAgNE
• http://parkinsonslife.eu/6-inspiring-ted-talks-on-parkinsons-disease/

This is my last day in South Beach. Back to winter tomorrow. The frequency of posts will decline, but please stay tuned, I still have much to say or rather "write" as PD has all but robbed me of the ability to coherently find words when talking.

For me, silence is my method of avoiding misfortune and perhaps a little humiliation.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

I have been bragging about the fact that my PD seems to be progressing slowly and today, this happens.

I was standing in the bathtub taking a shower. I went to turn to face the shower and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, outside the tub, with my legs, from the knees down, still draped over the side of the tub. I had fallen, taking the shower curtain with me. I narrowly missed the toilet with my head. I think the shower curtain saved me from that little indignity. In fact, I wasn't hurt at all. Just puzzled. Was the fall caused by the PD or carelessness? I have been feeling a bit woozy lately. I think it was PD. Maybe. Yesterday I walked three miles without my poles and without incident. So, maybe it wasn't PD.

Who knows? Who cares? PD will continue to attack my brain and I am resigned to my destiny. If not PD, then I was stupidly careless and things will have to change.

How perfectly strange to be 70!