Camping: The activity that best promotes the value of a hotel

I just keep on dreaming. Virtual Reality Dreams. They are usually accompanied by pain and by morning I have forgotten the theme of the dream. Not last night however. The dream last night seemed so real because the incident really did happen.

About 35 years ago, I taught school, grades 7 & 8 in an upscale neighborhood, which just happened to have a large Jewish population. In June, the grade 8 teachers decided to take the children to camp out at a wilderness site. I was to go to the site a couple of days prior to the students' arrival to check the site out and make sure there were no bears nearby (there was one, but that is for another dream/story). I decided I would take a couple of the boys, both of the Jewish persuasion, with me to fish and have some fun. We had a fabulous afternoon, canoeing the lake and catching some good-sized fish and releasing them, but when it came time to eat, we built a fire and the following conversation took place:

• Me: OK, what do you have to eat?
• Student M: What do you mean?
• Me: What did you bring with you for supper?
• Student L: I didn't know we were supposed to bring food (and turning to Student M) Did you bring anything?
• Student M: No..... Mr. J, you didn't say we had to bring our own food.
• Me: I sort of thought that would be obvious but anyway that's OK, I have enough for the 3 of us.
• Student M: Great, what do you have? What's for dinner?
• Me: I have a large tin of Pork and Beans. I hope you like them because there is nothing else.

A funny look appeared on both of their faces and Student L announced "Mr. J, we are Jews; we don't eat pork!" Well, I wasn't going to let them starve, so there I sat, picking all of the pork out of the pork & beans. Think about it for a second. It proved to be a rather nasty and messy chore. Fortunately, they happily ate the remains.

The next day we had exhausted the "pork and/or beans", so for obvious reasons, we did not release the fish we caught that morning.

I enjoyed that dream but, as usual when I get these vivid dreams, I was awakened by a muscle cramp, of the nth degree, in my right lower leg. A few minutes of standing and remembering the incident, cured the cramp and made me smile.

The shirt off my back

I had another vivid dream last night. It was a short one and was interrupted by my entire back going into spasm. The dream started off well, she (who?) and I put raincoats over our nude bodies and went walking in the rain. I was feeling pretty good, but in the next instant, I was elsewhere and some creature was ripping the shirt off my back and gouging my skin. I awoke, slightly freaked out, until I realized my back had spasmed, a full back spasm that had worked its way into my dream. Now I will never know what happened. Just another of the shaking palsy's forays over the parapets of my defences.

Spasm An intense, involuntary contraction of a muscle or muscle group that can be quite painful. Muscle spasms can occur without apparent reason or be a consequence of overuse or excessive time spent in one position. The dystonia that develops in later stages of Parkinson’s is a severe spasm in which the muscles remain held in a contracted state for an extended time, causing pain and awkward positioning. Adjusting the Levodopa dosage sometimes lessens the occurrence of dystonia. restless leg syndrome (RLS), in which the legs twitch and tingle, often includes muscle spasms. sometimes massaging the area helps the muscles to relax. muscle relaxant medications often are necessary to interrupt the nerve signals causing the contractions when dystonia and spasms become frequent or disruptive. (http://what-when-how.com/parkinsons-disease/spasm-parkinson%E2%80%99s-disease/)

Welcome to my nightmare

BOOM BOOM, ain't it great to be crazy

I had another virtual reality dream last night. I was the main character in the dream, playing the role of a 17 year old. I am standing with a girl who is looking sheepishly at the ground. I am shuffling my feet and trying to curb the urge to run away, right away. The problem is the girl's father. He is lecturing us in a rather soothing, but serious' voice. Apparently we've been caught doing something naughty. The father turns his head when his younger daughter says something. The girl takes this opportunity to poke me in the ribs and whispers, "Take him fishing."

"What?"

"Take him fishing and he will cool off. Maybe he will even come to like you."

She smiles.

I am in some type of water craft. Just me and the father. He catches a fish that is so big it does a kind of dance across the water. After a good fight, he lands the fish and suddenly, there are fish everywhere. In the water, in the boat and as wall paper in the background of the scene, filling the sky.

I awake. I have to go to the toilet. There is more to the dream and I am intent on remembering the denouement. As I sit in the bathroom, I can remember the ending in technicolor. But, come the morning, I have forgotten that part entirely. Nothing. Just a blank. I wonder what happened after he caught that fish. Who were those people? What is the significance of the fish? Am I going nuts?

Later, as I am doing my morning stretches, I remember something else about the dream.

If the dream is a prediction of things to come, I might be going nuts. My brain flashes on the dream's background music playing on a record player on the girl's door step. It is Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne", except someone has changed the lyrics.

"And she knows you're half crazy but that's why she has to be here"

I am beginning to think that insanity is a form of recreation for me. It could become a team sport, if you want to join.

Anyone?

There can be no soft surrender

I don't know about you, but I am not going to give up my war with PD. So I exercise and then I exercise again. I admit there are times when I think, "Why bother? It's a progressive degenerative disease. You can't stop the progression. You might be able to slow it down, but it will win in the end. So, why bother?" Then I give my head a shake. PD is my reality. I have to learn to live with it and if there is even the slightest possibility exercise can slow it down, then bring on that exercise. Fight the good fight. Onward and Upward. Cross every mountain. Make love, not war! Oops, that last one doesn't fit. For a moment there, I flashed back to the 60's and the summer of love.

God, the 60's were so long ago. I was in my twenties with not a care in the world and a future so bright, I had to wear shades. I never thought anything bad would happen to me. I was going to lead a healthy life until the day I died. I wasn't even sure I would ever die (But if I did die, I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes spread on Michelle Pfeiffer). And our family was so darned lucky. Flash forward 40 years and I am diagnosed with early stage parkinson's. I was not upset at the specific diagnosis; I was upset that I was having bad luck. That just wasn't in my plans, but God chuckled and, WHAM, I got parkinson's.

Well, m'lord, you may have put up an obstacle, but I will find away around it for the following reasons:

• I have a touch of OCD. When I get into something, I can't stop. Thus, I exercise 6 days out of 7. Good, hard exercise designed to keep the demons away. It seems to be working because I have not changed too much over the past 3 years.
• My wife, a physiotherapist, keeps me positive and shows me ways to live with PD. Without her support, I might not be so sure of my pyrrhic victories.

I think I have met the criteria to brand my battles a "Just War", don't you?

Essay : Emotion - a subjective, conscious experience characterized primarily by psychophysiological expressions, biological reactions, and mental states. Or, how I am becoming an emotional woman!

My friend took me to a hockey game the other day, Winnipeg vs Tampa Bay. I enjoyed getting out and even enjoyed the game; although Winnipeg played like amateurs in losing. However this isn't about hockey, it is about the steepness of the stairs in the arena. Our seats were in the last row (good seats, great view) but I was a little shaky and felt like I was climbing Mount Everest. At least there was a handrail, but it ended 2 rows from ours and to add to my nervousness, having gone late, our row was fully occupied so that people had to stand to let us reach our seats. The result was the pathway to our seats was very narrow and I could imagine myself losing balance. I didn't. I sat down and enjoyed the action on the ice. Going down the stairs was easy and no problem. What causes me concern is that before PD, I would never have had those feelings and now I do. I tell you, PD does strange things to my emotions.

As I have said before, my feminine side is surfacing. I get emotional over the strangest things. For example, I was watching "Chuck" on netflix and got emotional when the spy girl, Sarah, told Chuck there could never be anything between them so Chuck went back to the meat lady (Rachel, I think). Now I have this conundrum: Will Sarah admit her love for Chuck or is Chuck going to find happiness with Rachel. Oh yeah, Sarah's old boyfriend, (whose name I don't remember) has just returned; albeit in a frozen state. Now there is a love triangle with Sarah, Chuck, and the frozen ex? God lord, don't the writers realize I can only take so much.

You see what I mean?????

On the bright side of things, after suffering through 2 or more weeks of temperatures between -25C and -45C, the cold spell has suddenly broken. I awoke this morning to -8C and I finally emerged from hibernation to walk 3 miles. I had a tremor in my right hand through the first mile, but it disappeared and I walked the last 2 miles tremor free. I really believe exercise is essential for PWP. The predicted high for tomorrow is zero and I should be out there again.

However, PD has also given me an unreasonable temper for the stupidest of reasons. Big things don't bother me. It's the little things, like weather forecasts. The problem is the weatherman hardly ever gets it right. It is rather annoying. I expect a warm up and weather prognosticators screw up, sometimes as much as 5 degrees, and not in the right direction. For crying out loud, they have computers to help them but, in the winter anyway, they are wrong more than they are right. It makes me crazy. I was talking to a friend who, before retiring, was a meteorologist with Environment Canada. After being teased about the inaccuracy of EC's forecasts, he good-naturedly replied, "What do you want? It's only a guess."

You see what I mean???

Top Ten for the past month

1. Canada 267
2. United States 250
3. France 47
4. United Kingdom 42
5. Russia 19
6. China 14
7. Vietnam 14
8. Germany 8
9. Ireland 7
10. Spain 5

The Talking Dead & The Season of the Twitch

A good friend of 32 years, G, wrote to me recently remarking,
"Something that I haven't mentioned, but have thought for awhile - I am surprised that you are so lacking in self-confidence; you have written in various ways that you are reluctant to speak because you are afraid someone will think you a fool. Now, I am here to tell you that you are neither a fool nor inclined to play the fool."

Thank you G. That helps ...alot.

I have been lacking in self-confidence lately because of problems with word finding (a fairly common symptom of PD). For example, I was out for dinner with friends the other night when I got into a conversation with the person next to me. I wanted to say, sarcastically, that if they ever found a cure for cancer, there would be a lot of people out of work. I stumbled after "..ever found..". Do you think I could think of the word "cure"? I could not, so I substituted, "If they ever uh, uh,(pause) solve that problem with cancer, a lot of people will be unemployed." Fortunately, I worked in his law firm and he knows my problem. It is the stumbling and the need for simple words, or strange phrases, to get over the block that causes me distress and yes, a diminishing of my self-confidence. G's words are appreciated.

Speech is about expressing ideas via the use of language. Language is a cognitive ability that can be present even when you cannot speak. In the case of people with PD, they may exhibit word-finding difficulties and grammatical difficulties. They tend, for example, to use simplified sentence structures with an increase in the ratio of open-class items (nouns, verbs, adjectives) to closed-class items (determiners, auxiliaries, prepositions, etc.), as well as an increase in the frequency and duration of hesitations and pauses.(Patrick McNamara PhD)

I shall try to give myself the freedom to make mistakes without thinking myself to be stupid. And as for other people...well I don't care what they think as long as it isn't true. That's self-confidence.

On the upside, my symptoms have calmed down except I have had a couple of serious cramps and even more spectacular spasms. Yesterday, my grandchildren were over and I was snoozing on the couch, while watching "Cracked", when I had a full body spasm. Truly, for a second I must have looked like Linda Blair in The Exorcist when she started to float above her bed. My 5 year old grandson saw me. He looked very serious and a little bit wary/nervous when asking,"Are you watching a scary movie Grandpa?" This seemed like a good explanation. I said "Sort of. In my head." He was satisfied and went back to play and I turned off the TV, just in case. No use in introducing him to reality. I prefer that he sees a healthy grandpa with some peculiar qualities - a sort of eccentric old man who has his own style of moving and who every so often practises floating off of beds.

The Fall of the House of Bluster

For some time I have been telling people, quite boastfully I might add, that my PD was progressing slowly. Maybe it still is, but there are indications that it is somewhat more aggressive than I thought.

For example:

1. Right eye hurts
2. Joints in my right hand and foot get cold and sore.
3. Shakier now, especially on the right side.
4. Voice is practically non-existent. My brother did not recognize my voice when he phoned recently.
5. Word finding is becoming more difficult when speaking (I have no word finding problem with the written word). I am starting to either (a) talk in simple sentences or (b) remain quiet or (c) avoid social contact, which is not difficult as my social life is limited as it is.
6. I have had to increase my medication

The moving eye looks on and having looked, hurts like the blazes.

Apparently, all muscles are affected by PD, including whatever muscles operate the eyelid. Some PwP don't blink very often. Blinking moistens the eye and removes grime. Since some of us are blinking challenged, our eyes get dry and sore. The result is I spend a fortune on artificial tears. Don't you just love the vagaries of parkinson's?

As for my voice......Well, don't get me started.

I would enjoy adding to a conversation but if I open my mouth and stumble over words, I think myself a fool and wonder what my listeners think. For now, my blog will have to suffice for conversation. Anyway, it has been said that one of the great arts of conversation is silence. I am content with that.

Today, I have nothing more to say. Besides, there is always tomorrow.

I am trying to remain positive.