<H1>A little bit of sugar helps the medicine go down</h1>

I had breakfast with an old friend yesterday. He is one of those interesting people who tells interesting stories about interesting, albeit, eccentric topics, usually concerning his family. I still chuckle to myself at the time he solved his oldest daughter's impertinence when she asserted herself by shouting and slamming her bedroom door. My friend solved that problem by removing the door.

Stories like that. They come out of left field. They are particularly humorous and he is able to laugh at himself and the image he must have presented, for example, when driving to the lake and insistently telling his children in the back seat of his old truck to stop whatever it was they were doing. When he was unsuccessful, he stopped the truck and proceeded to attempt to rip off the locked rear door in order to deal with his kids, much to their amusement.

He has slowed down now, as he should have for he is 70 and dealing with diabetes II and other physical problems. Sometimes I am glad that I only have PD as my struggle.

We must have made quite a show for the other patrons of the restaurant. He is pretty much deaf and my voice is like the voice of the low talking woman in the Seinfeld show. The discussion was peppered with "what's that again", "pardon" "what did you say?", etc. Still it was good seeing him. He still has the ability to make me laugh with his comments about his hearing problem and my speaking voice, or lack thereof. He is not perfect, but that's what makes him perfect.

The good thing about this meeting was my ability to converse without my word finding disability. When I am completely at ease, my disability is not present. Why does the problem disappear when I am not feeling rushed or I am not in a teaching or scholarly mode? I found the following inThe Journal of Parkinson's disease, March 18, 2017:

“Around 70 per cent of people with Parkinson’s have problems with speech and communication, which can really impact their quality of life.

“Researchers and clinicians have in the past focused on the physical problems patients have with making their speech clear. But patients themselves say the problems are more complex and are more to do with cognitive impairment – for example not being able to think quickly enough to keep up with conversations or not being able to find the right words.

“They say that this has the biggest impact on their ability to communicate in everyday life. “We wanted to really prioritise the problems that patients experience – and to find out whether it is clarity of speech, or these more cognitive issues, that have the most impact on everyday communication.”

The research team undertook the first systematic review to look at whether cognitive issues or physical speech problems create the biggest barriers to communication. They sifted through nearly 5,000 studies in search of helpful data, and found 12 relevant studies involving 222 patients.

They found that both cognitive status and physical speech problems are associated with everyday communication problems among people with Parkinson’s. However patients who had greater cognitive difficulties, had more problems communicating.

And while patients with less clear speech also had trouble communicating, this factor had less of an impact on everyday communication."

Cognitively, I think I am fine. It must be some other factor causing my problem. Interesting. You can read more at http://www.journalofparkinsonsdisease.com/slow-thinking-conversation-stopper-people-parkinsons. But, in the meantime, pick low stress situations in which to converse. Your conversation will flow and you might find out you are an "interesting" person too. You have waited too long to unleash those interesting stories that you have secreted away because PD often made you sound stupid whenever you opened you mouth but, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson,

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

I look forward to our next meeting.