The Neurologist was a lovely bloke and got me to do a few simple movements including cog wheeling (flexing arm muscles), making bird pecking moves with my hands, walking a straight line, touching my nose and the point of a pencil, drawing a two-dimensional snail; and then after a short while he drew a simple image of a stick man with dopamine from the left side of his brain crossing to the right side of his body and gradually failing to do its job.
I wasn’t shocked: rather I was initially relieved to know what was wrong: so this failure of my left brain to produce dopamine, something of a happiness drug, accounted for a range of odd symptoms I’d vaguely noted, from the shakes (right hand and wobbly right buttock when peeing), to lack of feeling, to gagging on a toothbrush, to staggering on the train, to a fearful feeling when stepping down or up from and to a bus or train platform or stop. Now I was staring into space, or staring at the pavement, afraid to trip up.
His parting advice was to read www.parkinsons.org.uk and nothing else, especially from overseas, come back and discuss medication. He also told me I was entitled to a second opinion.
I returned to my office and looked up the website, got 2 pages in to symptoms and had to turn the computer off: I didn’t want to read about other people’s tremors, rigidity, slowness of movement, digestive problems, depression, light headedness, fainting, hot flushes, balance problems...and and and.....what point is there in reading about Bloody Parkinson’s if it makes you so bloody miserable? In particular I didn’t want to read about mobility scooters.
I certainly felt this Parkinson bloke had a lot to answer for.
So I walked round in circles vigorously swinging both arms and convincing myself all was normal. I laughed into the mirror in the gents and experimentally chuckled out loud. And I realised how odd it all was: struggling to escape a low chair, walking like a clockwork soldier, spilling a pint, not smiling.
Then my wife popped in the office and asked how it had gone and I said it’s Parkinson’s and she said could we talk about it later as she had to take a load of stuff to the dump. Then my 21 year old daughter turned up and I again announced the diagnosis as Parkinson’s and she said tell me later I’ve got to rush to M&S to return a skirt. Keeping their priorities right. What hope was there that any of my friends would be interested?
The Neurologist's Report
I quote verbatim from the Neurologist’s written report to my GP: ‘on examination he had a mask like face (well you wouldn’t smile would you?); he walked with a loss of arm swing of the right hand with a dependant tremor (try not swinging an arm when you walk); there was no opthalmoplegia (search me too); he had a rest and action tremor (the shakes?); he had mild bradykinesia (who is this Brady then because I’d like to give him a piece of my mind?)’.
He finished the report by saying he suspected I’d developed idiopathic PD.
A dictionary helped me work out that opthalmoplegia is a paralysis or weakness of muscles controlling eye movement; bradykinesia is slowness of movement, rigidity and tremor; idiopathic means of unknown cause.
But really the medical specialists know little of what Jane Fonda (whose husband has PD) calls a boutique disease i.e. affects us all differently and there’s no cure. So vague is the advice that it seems my guess is about as good as yours.
Just to start let’s imagine a brave new world where we lose our smile and walk with all the grace of a clockwork soldier, searching for cracks in the pavement designed to trip you up........
