opinion: my strange journey with parkinson's
the progressive disease is challenging, but it's not all unpleasant.
2 minute read
we apologize, but this video has failed to load.
try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
i used to be able to type. i learned how to, one spring in high school, in welland, ont. because of parkinson’s disease, i no longer readily can. this was typed by my wife. one evening, this wife sighs a deep sigh and says, “i might as well show you this, you’ll see it sooner or later.” it is a report from the cbc from deepest newfoundland and labrador about a remote fix for parkinson’s. lucky man from newfoundland can drive and dance and go to restaurants again, thanks to midbrain stimulation sent from a hospital in toronto to his pacemaker in mount pearl. “wow!” say my often-hoaxed hope and my wife. and yet we see no lineups with pickets in front of neurologists’ offices in montreal.
the latest fix, it turns out, is really very old. i asked my then-neurologist about it years ago and the voice at the other end, not the boss’s, but an intern’s, told me, “oh that’s not for you.”
now, i’ve got to tell you that, especially if english isn’t your native tongue, you should be careful when reporting on an unmeasurable and immense disease like parkinson’s. what exactly did he mean by that “not for you”? i wasn’t eligible because i was an immigrant? because i was too old? or because they had run out of lucky numbers for that day?
advertisement
i had already quit one bright and honest and pleasant specialist whose send-off was, “there’s always the surgeon, but i doubt that he will take you because you don’t react much to the medication.” then there was specialist x who promised, “we’ll find a solution,” and then dropped me because with my faltering faith i was clearly doctor-shopping.
of course, it isn’t all unpleasant within a specialty-boutique disease like parkinson’s. for instance, there are the exotic side effects of the medications: increase of libido and a desire to gamble. in my case, under prolopa, the gambling exhibited itself as a record-breaking decision to buy a used subaru in 20 minutes. as to effects libdinal, they’re unprintable.
eight years on, i supposedly have parkinson’s. how they know, i don’t know. you’ve heard of white-coat hypertension, when the blood pressure zooms in the presence of doctors, but you should only see my white-coat tremor and tremolo. how can they diagnose me behind all that blizzard of prestidigitating interference by my show-off hands? why, i’m a regular one-man dance troupe!
at any rate, my european cousins get told, presenting the very same symptoms i do, that they have something called familial tremor, a relative of epilepsy.
advertisement
i may one day tell you more about my progressive disease when sometime in 2023 the government teaches me, as promised, to talk to computers. i’d hold my fingers crossed, if i could.
tom lozar is a retired vanier college professor.
share story
