Variations

Until recently I’ve been travelling with my Parkinson’s on fairly steady, flat ground. My symptoms were predictable and I was learning to negotiate around them. But the negotiations have broken down and the terrain has shifted. I am now travelling on an incline and it has made it more difficult. My symptoms and my limitations are no longer predictable. I need to learn to navigate around this new terrain…

It seems that my Parkinson’s will be a repeating series of negotiation breakdowns, shifts in terrain and learning the new map of my limitations.

It is all too easy to see this shift in symptoms as a decline. But a decline implies you, in your specific case, know the end point of the decline. I know in general where I’m travelling to with my Parkinson’s but I don’t know how I will get there or what I will pass on the way; I know I’m travelling North to South but I go from place to place. Defining every shift in symptoms as a decline turns your colour TV into black and white; you may miss the symptoms that correct themselves (my walking has started to oscillate from good to bad to good again) or improve with medication. If you set yourself up with only decline in mind that is all you will see.