parkinsonSpace

Do I get that “butterflies in the stomach” feeling as my appointment with the consultant approaches? I see the consultant approximately every six months and in between appointments see the Parkinson’s nurse a couple of times. Seeing the specialist consultant is quite a big event in my calendar. She is friendly and engaging, but the real point of the meeting is the evaluation of my condition and the progression of the Parkinson’s.

I was diagnosed in September 2015; I’ll speak more about that in a later blog. For about two years I took no medication but tried to control the symptoms through exercise and diet. As things became more difficult (for example, I had difficulty getting out of a chair or turning over in bed), I started to take the dopamine agonist Ropinirole; first 1 mg three times a day, then 3 mg, then 4 and now 5. There is still room to increase this, and there is stronger medication further down the line. To me, each increase represents another step towards disability, though I know that I should consider it merely as a question of identifying the right dose to manage the symptoms in daily life.

One thing that intrigues me about these appointments is the consultant’s ability to evaluate the condition by manipulating the patient’s wrist and forearm in order to judge the stiffness, one of the main symptoms. Most people think of Parkinson’s tremor, the hand shaking and defying control. It sometimes happens to me, when I’m tired or nervous, but in the appointment I can usually avoid tremors even when the consultant tries to distract me by asking me to count down from a hundred in Spanish.

Strangely, these appointments are a rare occasion when I come face-to-face with other people with Parkinson’s. And it is impossible to avoid comparing yourself to them, whose symptoms are either less or more severe than my own. This is what I once was and this is what I shall become…