Dopamine - where would be if we had some

"Dopamine" 

You would think they could have found a better name for this very important neurotransmitter.  I know because I lack the stuff and so do you if you have parkinson's disease.

Dopamine is responsible for our movements (among other things) and is produced by a structure in our brains.  For some unknown reason, the brain stops producing dopamine and "bang", there goes our ability to control our movements.  The result is tremors, rigidity,  slow movements, shuffling and a whole bag of other symptoms that I won't describe because I don't want to scare you.  Needless to say, after 11 plus years of living with this dark shadow, I am still relatively normal and lead a relatively normal life.  All thanks to the drugs.

My daily drug regime involves taking a cocktail 4x a day of

      

amantadine - an anti-viral that seems to help subdue the tremor.  It is a miracle drug for me.  I am        tremor free when I remember to take the drug.

carbidopa/levadopa - which increases dopamine in the brain

mirapex -  a dopamine agonist which fools the brain into thinking there is dopamine available

I am not free of movement problems, for example. getting into and out of a bed can be a challenge.  Those damn covers conspire to keep me out.  You will eventually know what I mean.

Walking can be difficult because of festination.  Look it up.  Also because of slowness of movements

Jumping is close to being impossible,  with a couple of centimeters being my upper limit.

The oddest symptom  I have encountered is the concept of "freezing" which describes a condition where your feet seem to be stuck the ground.  You can't move.  When I first stand, I have to shuffle my feet in a circle or I will probably fall.  One thing is certain, I am not going forward until I complete this exercise.

I consider myself lucky.  Thanks to the drugs I am relatively symptom free of movement difficulties and, an even find humor in the disease:

     

             My friend died last night.  We  are not sure of the cause but we are highly suspicious because                             we found this code on his phone  99999911111111.  Investigation is continuing.

FINDING THE RIGHT combination and dosages of medications to help manage your Parkinson’s disease symptoms can be a challenge. Compounding that challenge is something called the “on-off” phenomenon, in which your meds start to wear off over time, leading to an increase in motor symptoms that can be difficult to deal with

The Role of Dopamine in Parkinson’s

Before we can really understand the on-off phenomenon of Parkinson’smedications, we have to first understand the role that dopamine, a neurotransmitter, plays in the body. 

Normally, the brain makes its own dopamine, and it aids in several important functions throughout the body, explains Jennifer S. Hui, M.D., a neurologist with Keck Medicine of University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. “For unknown reasons, we have a loss of that neurotransmitter that leads to Parkinson’s disease,” she says. “That neurotransmitter helps with movement, and without it, movement is slowed down.”

That’s why common Parkinson’s symptoms include tremors, difficulty walking, slonessand feelings of slowness or heaviness.

The role that dopamine—well, lack thereof—plays in Parkinson’s is evident in the main treatments for the medication. The gold standard for treating Parkinson’s is a drug called carbidopa/levodopa, says Dr. Hui. This drug, and several other medications for Parkinson’s (dopamine agonists), work by increasing dopamine in the brain to help reduce those motor complications.

 I have lived my entire PD life wrapped in the arms of positivity.  My diagnosis was in 2011with the onset around 2008 when I first noticed I could no longer smell the most offensive of odours. That progressed through an inability to swallow, soft speech and finally my right handed hand jive.

Medicine improved my life to a great degree, but so did positive thinking.  Just by comparing my situation to that of MJF, I decided I would use all my weapons to fight PD and I would say to myself "you will win in the end!" and I like to think that helped.

Take the advice of Mark Twain:

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

THE WILFRID LAURIER and CASPER THE GHOST CONSPIRACY

William Friedkin who directed The Exorcist lost the title, to me, for being the greatest producer of scary material, when I discovered he ghost of Laurier House, a national treasure in Canadian history.

The house had been owned by Wilfrid Laurier and it was haunted; ergo, we toured the house every year, hoping to see a ghost.  One year, one of the Mounties (RCMP) who guarded the house and its contents told a group of us they were certain the place was haunted.  In fact, they said, a fellow mountie heard or saw someone that scared him so badly, he spent the rest of his shift sitting outside on the front steps.

Whoa!!!! that gave me fuel for my fire.  "Our teacher might con us, but the mounties would never sink so low" became the refrain." They believed the mounties' story and chatted about the ghost of Laurier House on and off all day, asking me questions and doubting my answers.  Finally I told them the following story.

"I heard this story last year and it sounds true.  It seems that 4 students wanted to join a club called "the succubus chapter"  a goup dedicated to bringing the most evil dead men and women back to life and the 4 newbies were required to attend the next seance to bring Henry VIII back from the spirit world. The 4 students joined hands and called for the evil Henry to appear.  After just a few minutes, the spirit appeared before them in the form of  pulsating ball of green light.  The newbie succubi had coaxed it from beyond there was absolute silence as it flew into the body of one of the 4 students and took over.  At first the body  just made gutteral sounds, but soon it morphed into a face and a hand....a hand holding a knife.  He turned to his left and then to his right and carved up one of them leaving a bloody corpse writhing on the floor. Fortunately the leader of succubus cult  had his face painted in the ancient manner which caused the ghost to be repelled."

Stopping there, he gave the 4 a chance to back out because as he said, I can't exert much control over my bloody instincts when the spirit is inside me.  The mounties certainly believed it so the 4 should think about not participating.

They wanted in but I said NO unless your face has the magic words "bah, sueg socah toah" (Klingon characters I told them later) meaning "no fear.   I am here".  They agreed and I used a grease crayon to cover their faces in colourful dodads.

The seance began.  I was at my evil best, making dark noises and sudden movements.  There was much squealing and one girl crawled under her bed.  I convinced them of the green ball of light coming toward me and entering my body. All hell broke loose as the 4 (and there were about 8 spectors) started screaming and hugging until in my evil voice I said "I am the ghost called Casper and you all look ridiculous" 

All hell broke loose again, only this time with laughter and cajoling.

Of course this is just a summary of events I performed each year on a class trip to Ottawa.  The actual seance took over 45 minutes of fear and enjoyment.

The power of suggestion! Has it any place in the war against PD?

The power of suggestion - the first seance

A first I thought I would get in trouble but after a few years I realized parents were cool with my antics.  I would not be punished for scaring their kids, especially while in Ottawa on one of our Edutreks. but how would I accomplish that?.    I told them lots of ghost stories throughout the year (yes, former students, I made them up, every last one of them) culminating in the Ottawa SEANCE!  The following are snippets of some of the seances I made up to scare them silly.

The Westdale ghost......I really don't remember all the details but I had about ten students and one teacher in my student residence room when, out of the blue, I suggested trying to contact the dead. 

Never underestimate the power of suggestion.  I concocted a story of a murder that had occurred in the very room we were in (at Carleton University or University of Ottawa - I'm old and forget which one we used on that trio)  Off went the lights and I began.  The students sat, big-eyed, intent on my voice, which had taken on a weird, raspiness as I called for the spirits to come forth.  I knew I was having the desired effect when the teacher got up and said, "I'm getting out of here!" and left the room.  

I said to the students, "Perhaps I should stop." but there was no way.  They wanted more.  I warned them that the story I was telling would cause them to lose sleep but that was no deterrence.  I told them if we concentrated, the ghost of the victim would manifest itself as a glowing green ball somewhere in the room and it would enter my body and I would be his paranormal speaker, if he had anything to say.  

In about 10 minutes I had them believing that the dead man's aura was hanging over an old armchair in a far corner of the room and was taking on his human form, seated with his legs crossed.  They saw and believed every thing I said.  

How do I know they believed? Two things.  First, they had all moved away from the chair and got closer to me and second, when the light was back on, a student who had not participated in the seance strolled in and was lowering himself into the chair when a chorus of hysteria arose from the participants who screamed:

DON'T SIT THERE!!!!!!

The newcomer, hearing the fear in their cry, jumped up and took the 10 feet from the chair to the bed in one stride.

I began to laugh and while I listened to several voices giving various explanations as to why he shouldn't sit in that chair, I thought to myself, "I bet he will never make a jump like that again!"

The power of suggestion.

JORDAN, MASON AND THE EXORCIST 1973

This post has nothing to do with PD.  It is intended for those students who accompanied Laidlaw teachers to Ottawa, a 45 hour trip of 1,041 miles (1,675km).  This was the first Edutrek.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Mark Twain

   

Firstly, I am compelled to recognize Alan Mason as the driving force behind Laidlaw’s first trip to Ottawa, which Al dubbed "Edutrek". I joined forces with him, and I insisted that we go by train for two reasons:

 

         1.      Being locked up together in  a train car would require interaction between all students and, fallowing the logic of Mark Twain, you would be forced to live as a "family" and maybe find some value in a student you didn’t care for before embarking on the trip, 

 

         2.      You would finally get a sense of how huge  and wild Canada is.  Two days on a train will do that.

 

We took up every seat but one in our coach.  The lone seat was occupied by an elderly gentleman who quietly disapproved of young people in general and his coach mates in particular.  He suffered your antics with the occasional snort as you scrambled for sleeping spaces, including the overhead luggage racks. Finally he could no longer remain silent and he took Al aside and quietly the conversation went as follows:

 

Passenger:  You know what those kids are doing up there in those luggage racks?

 

Al:  No. What are they doing?

 

Passenger: They are rutting, that's what. Rutting!

 

Al: I will look into it.

 

We were certain that there was nothing untoward going on, but, trust but verify, and to keep the passenger happy, we looked but  found no evidence of "rutting" and were glad to see the passenger get off the train at Capreol.

 

Arriving in Ottawa, we were met by your billets, led by their teacher, Mister Pierre Landrieu, a name Al could not pronounce so he would refer to him as Pierre Laundromat, but not to his face. (BTW we never billeted again)To save money, Al and I booked a room in a motel not far from the billets' school.  This was a rather seedy place so whenever he and I went anywhere by taxi, Al would insist on being dropped off a couple of blocks from the motel so nobody would see us getting out of the cab at the motel. 

 

The motel was a tad rundown and meeting the owner, an older lady wearing a feather boa did not enhance its appeal.  It was clean but the room was small, for example when sitting on the toilet, your feet could easily fit into the bath tub.

 

One evening, to kill time, we decided to go and see The Exorcist to see what all the fuss was about. As the movie went on, we heard screams and other weird noises coming from the audience.  I held my hand above my eyes, as if shielding them from the sun, thus affording me the opportunity to look into my palm whenever a scary part came on.  Alan watched the whole movie but every so often he would say "Oh my goodness", "Good Lord" or similar phases throughout the movie.

 

When we got back to the motel, I said I don't believe in the devil and to prove it, I loudly added, if there is a devil, come and take me.  I am yours. It is at this point in the story when I retold the details of your week in Ottawa to all the grade 9 students I worked with over the next 29 years at hallowe'en.

I would pick out the girl who  appeared to be the most engrossed in the story.  I would maneuver my way beside her and when got to the point in the story where I said to the devil "I am yours" I would look into her eyes and loudly say in my most evil voice 

BUT AS YOU CAN SEE NOTHING HAPPENED TO ME!!!!

 

That always got my desired reaction - a loud scream and a condemnation of my ruse.

 

I would never have gotten to have that laugh if it were not for a seedy, tiny room, boredom and a trip to the movies on the very first Edutrek.

I have told your story many times and made your class famous every  year that I taught.  Thanks for the memories