CQ10

Wow! It has been over a month since last  I wrote.  I have a couple of things to pontificate on:

1.     I found the following in PD site....Dear friend, CoQ10 is beneficial to Parkinson's patients. I'm taking 100mg as supplements daily. I found myself walking better and talking with confidence. 

     In my >10 years of fighting PD,  I have tried many "cures". including CQ10 and have concluded there are no magic pills.  CQ10 won't hurt you but it will have no effect on PD.  I also found it to be too expensive.  If taking CQ10 is beneficial to you, then you are suffering from some other problem.

2.   There are 11 confirmed virus carriers in my province.  Nobody in the hospital, 300 in total since onset, 7 dead.  I consider these stats to be alarming so please stay away from crowds, wash thoroughly, sanitize, and wear a  mask.  God forbid we see stats like the fools in the south.

3.  Keep the border closed.

The professor has left the desktop.

Stay safe.  

wallflower

First draft of a poem I call "wallflower"

The queen of the shades
lurks in the shadows
lost in her mind and her moods
her yearning torments her
The music is soaring
She stands in her corner and broods

her thoughts are a maze
of one-way turns
She wallows in one and she sighs
she can't understand
the call of the wild
A howling that creeps from her thighs

She enters the circle
and sways to the center
but nobody knows she is there
she picks at her nails
she carefully painted
And runs her hand through her hair

then as if by some magic
her hand is rerouted
he takes her hand by surprise
they move to the music
delaying the darkness
that covers her heart and her eyes

just for a moment
she's caressed by enjoyment
her happiness comes and it fades
she won't let them see
the queen with a smile
she rules the land of the shades

Whatcha you gonna do when they come for you

Have you ever stared into the abyss and all you saw was the abyss staring back at you? You know now it was probably unreal but then you knelt before the god of light riding at the speed of dark, shedding pearls of uncertainty to form a garland of doubt around your neck.

It's a whole other world in here.

PART ONE ....On an all-time high?

This event I am about to relate is mind-bending. It rocked my world. When I took a walk on a yellow-brick road, I came to a fork. I couldn't decide which way to go until I heard the ghost of Yogi Berra, "WHEN YOU COME TO A FORK IN THE ROAD, TAKE it! So I did. I took the fork in the road.

Does anyone here remember the sixties? If you can remember them, the man says you probably weren't there. Do you remember the first time you got high? l mean really high. Not the marijuana type high. That's for sissies. I mean the kind of high in which you really don't know what's going on. what is real or unreal. You know, just an ordinary, superstar scary type of high!

Let me tell you about the first and last time I dated LSD. Some friends and I decided we would try some acid. We met with two dealers known as the Deputy and the Beast. The Deputy was the dealer and The Beast was the enforcer. We purchased some LSD from The deputy, placated the Beast and relocated ourselves to a party in a local frat house. It took a while for the LSD to kick in. but when it did, it scared the hell out of me. I was lying on a couch, watching revelers fill the room with sexual energy, when I reached under the couch and pulled out a long knife covered with blood. I didn't show it around for fear of the consequences. To be safe, I threw the knife deep under the couch.

I was mystified when I later discovered that my bloody knife was, in fact, a rat-tailed comb It was all so real. I believed e knife was real.

The knife was a real part of my unreal reality.

Our world was fraught with things that weren't there and when we got home, the three of us sat around supposedly "enjoying" the LSD; but, I was scared because I was a teacher and I could see, etched on walls of my mind, a headline Teacher takes LSD and fries brain. I was getting upset and I grew very nervous until someone said: "Relax, the drug has got a hold of your brain and it will go away". That made sense. I relaxed and enjoyed the trip. I took the scenic route. The one peppered with snippets of real unreality. I can laugh at it now, or maybe cry, but I never took a trip again and that should say something.

Part Two: Reality is an illusion

A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space.

Psychosis can be a frightening word that many people simply don’t understand. But what does it really mean? In Parkinson’s disease (PD), what your doctor calls psychosis usually starts with mild symptoms, but these can have a big impact on quality of life. Healthcare providers usually refer to these symptoms as "Parkinson's disease associated psychosis." Psychosis can vary from severe confusion (disordered thinking) to seeing things that aren’t there (hallucinations) to believing things that are not true (delusions),

Back to the future. I am alone in the house and asleep when a noise in the living room wakes me up. I go and find two people sitting in my chairs. One is a man in Goth makeup. The other is a woman who resembles my daughter. They both are staring at me. I try to talk to them but they continue to stare. I demand that they leave the house but they continue to stare so I go and get a ski pole from the bedroom. Their stare is relentless, so I hit the woman with the ski pole. She doesn't budge, so I threaten to call the police. This gets the man's attention but the woman just sits and stares. She refuses to leave. Gothman says, "I'm going" and he goes into the back yard. I say to the woman, "You better get out of here. The police are coming". I call 911 and the operator sends the police. I go out to the backyard to tell goth man and he says "let's go back in". We return and there are other people there. The woman keeps staring but now she has two friends with her: a man and a woman. They are friends of mine. They are staring. The man is my oldest grandson. I say "where is Sara?" (his mom). He says "I don't know" and then clams up. I tell them all to "get out!".

At that point the police arrive. I tell them I have Parkinson's Disease. They begin to question me. The female police person gets on her radio and heads outside. The male officer is obviously experienced. He asks me my birthdate and other personal questions. The female officer returns, speaks quietly to her partner but I hear her say "He's clean, just one speeding ticket". That was my record.

Somehow the people who were staring at me had gotten into the back yard. I say, "let's go look in the back yard". The police hesitate and I go out alone and I see the "starers" and I tell them "the police are here". At that moment I see a police cadet band. They climb over the fence and start to play. They move toward us and I think they must be background noise for a police arrest. They disappear when the male police officer comes out. He tells the "starers" to leave. They all do except the women. The boyfriend is on one side of the fence and she is on the other. When the police return, the woman is suddenly not there anymore. I look over the fence and the woman has joined her boyfriend on the other side of the fence and they are talking to the police.

I can see the neighbours watching.

I go into the house to watch through the window. I turn around and the police are inside. They ask me some other questions and then they go.

I curse the system that allows people to break into one's house without consequence. I hear the police officer make a telephone call to my eldest son and then I zone out. When I come out of it, my daughter-in-law is speaking on the phone. The police say to her "we are leaving. He will be OK. He is just a little confused". I am somewhat angry that they should write me off as a little confused. I say to them "I thought I made myself perfectly clear". They laugh and say, "You were anything but". My daughter-in-law helps to calm me down and the next thing I know I am lying on the couch talking to her. It suddenly becomes clear to me that I am stoned from the Parkinson's Disease and maybe the drugs I take. I say to my daughter-in-law, " I think that was a hallucination" but only half believing. In minutes all of my children come and I fall asleep.

The two stories are true. I know because I was the main character in both. I would prefer to never encounter another because I'm not absolutely sure we aren't all living in a hallucination now.

"It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously."

.
(H.L. Menkin)

Another three bite the dust

My mother used to say, "Bad things happen in threes". If she was right, I have nothing to worry about at all, having just completed my third. You see all my good luck has either abandoned me or maybe never existed.

Threes,fours, fives.....What does it matter!? I appear to be awash with bad luck, awaiting the return of my good luck.

Three bad things! That would just be the end. Here are the latest omens of the devil's work. Now keep in mind, these things are all played out against a background of PD ( heading into my 11th year) FIRST my wife died with cancer. She went very peacefully. That was 7 months ago and I still miss her terribly and I still have that "empty house" feeling. There is a hole in my heart that will never be filled. SECOND about 3 weeks ago I had the worst abdominal pain ever and walked into my bedroom just as an expert on CNN was saying "severe abdominal pain is possibly an early symptom of the virus".

What are the odds?

I brushed it off as a coincidence but when I took my temperature it was 37.2, slightly high, but google ensured me it was within the normal range for some people but it was also in covid-19's range. An hour later it was 36.9.

The next day I had a sore throat for about 3 hours followed by a very slight headache that disappeared when I started doing something.

Did the virus come calling? I don't think so. I think I am a bit of a headcase.

THIRD I looked at my hands yesterday and one knuckle was swollen. "Funny," I said to my son, "I don't remember hurting myself."

I put it out of my mind; that is, until the next day. I awoke to find that every middle knuckle on the fingers of both hands looking red and rough, capped off with swelling and filled with some kind of liquid. Google diagnosed RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS and after having spoken with my GP, I am 100% certain of the diagnosis.

Bad things come in threes. Right?

Hope so!

Whatsa matter....

.....can't you take it? Over 6 long months of living alone. Fortunately, my kids see or talk to me every day. They take turns. I am a lucky man. I now know why females who look after the household meals find the job taxing. Having to come up with something every day, without becoming predictable, is not easy. I don't know what I will have today. I have to look in my fridge but I think I will know what I will find: bottle of ginger ale, butter, some weiners, old caesar salad, etc, etc. I have got to clean it out. Tonight I will have a frozen meal or MacDonald's. Actually, I think a couple of hotdogs will suffice. Today's advice - don't put bananas in the refrigerator!

Solitude - not for sissies

A CASE FOR SILENCE

I go to my living room, find my favorite chair, take out my iPad and watch Burden of Proof. The house is silent so, along with a glass of lemonade, I delve into my perfect solitude. I do my best daydreaming when surrounded by silence.

The alternative is to swim in loneliness. I miss my wife terribly; although, there are times I feel her presence in the house. No ghost is she; rather, she is a warm and a welcome, subtle ripple in the air. All in my head probably, but still comforting.

Generally, upon my wife's death, I think people felt a miasma of loneliness and despair would fill my future, but it didn't. In the quiet of my situation, I whisper her name and wish her good morning and good night. I am never really alone.

I am glad I am an introvert because I honor silence and aloneness. I can be alone even in a crowded room. I just retreat into myself and live in my bizzaro world where poetry has taken root and rhymes are alive and making a racket; but, I need a little real noise; OK, a lot of noise, in short spurts, to keep from growing old. My grandchildren provide enough clatter to fill that role and I love the fact my entire family is concerned about me, frequently calling or dropping in. That is noise that surpasses my quiet, zen existence. I look forward to their calls and visits. I am incredibly patient, But when the children leave, I am exhausted and I wallow in my solitude. I have no choice. Silence is a part of me.

THE LADY OF SHALOTT AND ME

I did break the curse yesterday. I went to the local Safeway without incident. It was eerie to see the bakery and meat counter closed and even weirder to see the paper towel and toilet paper aisle devoid of product, like some old communist Russian cold war grocery.

A word, if you will, on the virus that is keeping me housebound. I know it will be defeated eventually but it is a struggle. Every evening we check the numbers but they keep rising. My genuine gratitude to our front-line soldiers, the medical heroes

I am getting emotional, almost teary-eyed. Many parkies have hyper-emotions and find themselves weeping at the strangest time. It is a common symptom of PD, just another gem of our condition. I am the worst.

I can get emotional at the sight of linoleum!

A note to our southern neighbours. If you are a fan of Trump

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

John Quincy Adams

Like some bold seer in a trance, Beholding all his own mischance

The only sounds in the house are the sounds of cars and the occasional person passing by, and I am feeling like the Lady of Shalott.  I am a prisoner in my home, a self-imposed quarantine, 'tis true, but I am still behind metaphorical bars.

With a wall and a half of windows, our living room is full of light.   I can sit and watch life go by, and keep track of the shadows as they creep across the street until they disappear into the evening.  I am The Lady of Shalott.  The lady had a curse and so do I.  My curse is having sentenced myself to self-imposed isolation to avoid the microscopic menaces that could kill me.

I am getting anxious, wanting to go out into the fresh air.

 I intend to soothe my anxiety today.  I am going to leave the house and to hell with the consequences.

Out flew the web and floated wide; 

The mirror crack'd from side to side; 

'The curse is come upon me,' cried 

                                        The Lady of Shalott. 

I ain't afraid of no curse but I can't help thinking, the Lady of Shalott died as a result of having 

unleashed her curse.  Nevertheless, I am going to go to the store, protected by a 6-foot force
field covering me and so, to hell with the curse, I am releasing myself.  

Freedom!

I will apprise you  of the mortality rate tomorrow.........if tomorrow ever comes