mea culpa

I keep missing comments and therefore, I don't respond when I would like to. Sorry. I have had 88,650 page views. It keeps me busy, but keep your comments coming. I enjoy reading them.

Will my lucky little star really shine, really shine?

I seem to have recovered somewhat. My balance has improved. I know this because I test myself each morning and anyway, I feel better walking. I feel lucky again. It was time for some kind of luck, preferably not bad; although, when you think about it, does "bad luck" really exist at all. A person is either lucky or unlucky. Bad luck is simply a lack of luck.

So endith the philisophical portion of this lecture.

Sorry, I just thought of more. Maybe people create luck when they plan for it. For example, I am trying to do everything in my power to keep my PD under control. If I succeed, I will deserve the sobriquet, "lucky guy". I am feeling lucky and plan to stay that way.

As you might be aware, Rock Steady Boxing is my latest weapon. At the age of 71, I am learning how to punch with power. I can do 20 pushups fairly easily and have achieved other heights of madness I hadn't embraced for eons. I can even skip rope; something I couldn't accomplish in my 20's. This is all thanks to the careful planning of the folks at the gym.

The most important gift I have received from boxing, is the creation of new pathways in my brain. I know them to be there, because I encounter them daily. I can feel the growth of my timing which leads to a better walking stride and less stress. I have a heavy bag at home and every so often, I smack that bag with all my new prowess, releasing any stress or distress and parking it there. Ten minutes of beating up the bag renders me stress free for a time and every PWP knows, less stress is good for the soul and lessens the power of PD.

Boxing is not the only solution. Try any form of exercise. Exercise. Exercise. Then exercise some more.

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. (Marcus Aurelius)

No thanks. I've made other plans....

I still feel LUCKY.  I have the ability and determination to conquer bad luck.

But then:

“If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.” 

― Steven Wright

I have seen the future. It is murder!

Ok.  It is 10AM.  I don't feel like I am going to fall over every step.  That's good, because yesterday I felt, at times, as if I had had too much to drink, displaying the steadiness of one who imbibes while walking the decks of the doomed Titanic.  What was it that made yesterday a shipwreck while today, I have no problems?  I think it was pulling my granddaughter in a sled to her school, over 1/2 of a mile, through new snow.  It was hard slogging for sure.  I was forced to bend forward with both hands behind my back to pull the sled at a decent speed.  When I dropped her off and started walking the half mile home, I felt a familiar feeling in my legs.  I was walking like a statue, clopping along, club footing.  Forget heel-toe, I had to concentrate on remaining upright.  I had felt this unease before yesterday's follies,  3 times to be precise  I was beginning to lean forward, awkwardly.  My steps were getting shorter and I felt like running.  I knew what was happening.  

Festination is an alteration in gait pattern characterised by a quickening and shortening of normal strides. This phenomenon is most commonly observed in patients with Parkinson's, and is sometimes known as Parkinsonian gait.

Parkinsonian gait indeed!  I was 30 meters from home when I knew I was going to fall.  Not a good feeling.  I stumbled across my lawn, through the snow. I was falling in a pinwheel rush, trying to stop the inevitable crash, when  I managed a death-like grasp at the stair-railing,  and saved face by pulling myself up.  My body was still moving forward even as I slowly entered the house.  My mind kept telling my legs to stop moving and eventually, I was able to sit down and rest.

It took a while to recover but eventually, I finally felt stable.  The rest of the day had me practically bouncing off walls and tipping over the lines in the floor pattern.  I had had a taste of my future.  I metaphorically spit it out and I  will no longer spend time dwelling on that future.  I know it won't be great.  Instead, I shall live the present content on the knowledge that I am doing my best to avoid "things" on the horizon.

Anyway, it is my day for boxing, so "things" are looking better, for now.

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Even fools might be right on occasion

You don't miss water until the well runs dry and you don't miss your balance until it says goodbye.

I offer this observation, right or wrong, on one of PD's little offerings. I am having problems with a lack of balance.

Don't get me wrong, I can still walk, but when I turn a corner or try to navigate even a small hill, I get wobbly. It is an unnatural state of affairs. Life should be in balance. Movement without PD was all a matter of internal, automatic maintaining of balance but now, not often, but often enough, it becomes a conscious correcting of balance in order to stay upright. It is particularly prominent in the half hour to hour prior to taking medication. Touch wood the condition does not take a sudden upsurge in progress for I have things to do this summer (more about that later) and I would prefer to do them unassisted.

At times my lack of control, provides a sly laugh to strangers and that can be rather humiliating; however, I subconsciously admit that my prodigious entries in this blog were born of the need to make sure people understood the vagaries of PD and their causal effect on the victim's feeling of humiliation and to help PWP realize they are not alone and should feel free from any indignity brought on by their condition.

“Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just.” ― Bernard of Clairvaux

I suffer from introspection and can easily conjure up problems that don't exist. It is at once my strength and my weakness. This entry is one or the other.

You choose.

What does an Assyrian have to do with PD?

Parkinson's, I think, has hit me hard; this time gifting me a pain in my back that has kept me from any kind of exercise. I have even missed my favourite exercise - boxing - 3 out of the last 4 sessions.

The trouble is, I tend to credit PD with every little ache and pain that might arise. I confess to a touch of Convergent Hypochondria (Don't look it up, it's mine). This time however, I might have blamed the wrong condition. This pain is so persistent, I am beginning to believe it is related to my back bones, much like the time I had a spinal stenosis. Hence I am going to my doctor next week.

Otherwise, how are you doing? Somebody asked. Just let me say:

* The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.

That is an example of a Netafore (new to the English language - again, it's mine). A Netafore is a figure of speech in which the author uses the net, some would say unsuccessfully, to whine about the state of his health by comparing his medical condition to an aging, raging, warrior full of lust for the kill and a passion for pain, attacking his body. A cold wind of speculation follows after.

Here endith the netafore......Get it?

Some good news is my old friend, who went under the knife a few entries back, survived the surgery with his sense of humour intact.

It seems to me that all of my childhood and historic friends have somehow aged, a lot! I thought I had not grown old until my granddaughter pointed out I was almost bald, whereupon I looked in the mirror but I couldn't see myself, blocked as I was by this old man starring at me from the other side of the mirror.

*from Lord Byron "The Destruction of Sennacherib"