Welcome to our hallucination

• Visual hallucinations. ... 
• Auditory hallucinations. ... 
• Olfactory hallucination. ... 
• Tactile hallucination. ... 
• Gustatory hallucination. ... 
• General somatic hallucination. ...

And the list goes on. 

I have encountered the first three but no doubt, I will be set upon by the others before I die.  

I have just concluded that life is a consensual hallucination;  we don't really exist, we are just figments of each other's hallucinations. Somehow we have found a way to hallucinate a common hallucination.

For some reason, we attempt to discover what mechanisms control our existence, to explain the unexplainable, to find order in our mutual chaos.  Why bother? You will just develop theories, ideas that can never be proven (or is that "proved"?).  For example, the big bang theory.  What a load of dung!  How are you going to explain the existence of the singularity that you vaunt started the mythical explosion? Why can't you accept that not everything has a beginning and an end? The only certainty in our mutual delusion is "change" which is inevitable in a chaotic system.  Your theories will remain theories. 

But. for that matter who cares?   

  Thus endeth today's rant.

BTW, hallucinations are not uncommon in PD

Living is a delusion

THIS IS THE END MY FRIEND

After 9 or 10 years of reading and writing about PD, I am done, done on the ins and out of PD but not on the blog.  From this point on, if you choose to keep reading, you will be hearing about the vagaries in the life of  PWP.  If you want to keep up-to-date about PD, I suggest you go to FaceBook and search for Gary Dikkema, who runs a blog called "Parkinson's in the Peg" 

I will be back soon.  For now, I'm only sleeping.

10 years!   Ten years since diagnosis.  I knew something was wrong a year before.  So let's say 11 years with this mindblowing condition and while I am in decent shape, I still have no affection for some of what PD has given to me:

This will be the Cole's Notes version of my new world.  What started out as a slight weakness in my right hand has blossomed into all-out  PD and yet the drugs keep my public symptoms from surfacing.  You would never know I had PD, but beneath the surface:

1,     I have a resting tremor
2     I grow more rigid as the months go by
3     I move at glacial speed
4      I festinate (look it up)   Not often, but it happens.
5.    I have absolutely no sense of smell
6    My voice is disappearing.
7    I talk slower in a monotone
8    I can't find words when I speak out loud
9     My ability to write (longhand & print)....yep....gone too
10   hard time eating, usually the last one to finish
11   sleep disturbances..... I rejoice if I get 4 hours sleep
12  constipation
13  fatigue

And that's just a few of them and yet, I carry on and accept this my life now and for the future and I am still an optimist.  I think 2020 will be a banner year.

Parkie dementia - it is all in the statistics.

I know, I know, I have been there and done that! It happens late at night when you cannot get back to sleep.  You let your mind plot against you.  It tends to do that as the dopamine relentlessly disappears from your brain.  It goes like this:

Oh my God!   Will my PD turn into  Alzheimer's? Afterall, we share similar symptoms? Or will I be struck down by PD related dementia???

First of all, PD is not Alzheimer's.

For example, a man with PD, loses his key and he asks his wife, " I can't find my keys. I forget where I put them.  I will keep looking."

A man with Alzheimer's doesn't lose his keys.  He can't.... because he can't remember what a "key" is.

What is in our future?  In the final stages of PD, 20 - 25% of PLWP develop dementia severe enough to interfere with their day-to-day life, about 10 - 15% higher than most people who live without PD.

I conclude:

Most PLWP will not develop dementia......hurray???????