Tuesday, January 31
Another night that included everything from blissfully sleeping wrapped in silk, to not being able to move in any useful way, at all. I got very little sleep and that determined my day until evening.
Wednesday, February 1
Another night like yesterday’s (and another day, following), except that in spite of the tendency to fall asleep anywhere, I felt particularly light and open. Walking was awkward but not tight. Typing was fairly smooth so long as I didn’t try to go at an accustomed speed. Tremors and shakes were 90% absent. And postural reconstruction continued to become evident. Posture began to improve about a week ago when suddenly I didn’t need a neck pillow when reclining. That was further supported by my ability to lie down on my back with my head more easily following. Neither has been possible for at least 18 months.
Thursday, February 2
I slept nine hours, broken only by a half hour in the middle. After a walk, shower, and lunch, I napped an hour more. During the hour that necessarily followed the nap (for de-zombification) I noticed that my default state is, for now, tremor-free, but that certain mental habits or stresses can turn tremors briefly on again. Stressors include (but not always and are not limited to) opening and passing through doors, positioning the on-screen cursor using a mouse, engaging in conversation with more than one person at a time, and eating spinach or anything else difficult to spear with a fork. Mental habits are harder to identify but all seem to involve fear of an imagined threat. I theorize that although a real threat may be followed by trembling, the brain would be too busy trying to confront the danger to indulge in a lousy tremor.
Friday, February 3
So, revisiting the tremor. I slept nine hours last night, plus an hour break in the middle. We walked the garage for a half hour, then bumped on cobblestones for twenty minutes to the dentist, had my teeth cleaned and bumped back. I read for a few minutes while Roman fixed lunch, and watched a YouTube on New York City architecture. Then I took a fifteen minute nap. Aside from arm clenching during some of the walk, there were no tremors until after the nap when arms and jaw tremored for about fifteen minutes, so add naps to the list of possible stressors.
Saturday, February 4
Revisiting naps. I usually doze for fifteen minutes while waiting for lunch, and the quality of that sleep is so delicious that I don’t resist trying for a longer nap after lunch. That almost always turns out to be a mistake. Zombification sets in, often joined by restless leg syndrome, and can take an hour or more, and lots of hall pacing to resolve. Even, then, it is now four in the afternoon and I’ve done nothing since lunch except to deal with the aforementioned annoyances, and am fighting to stay awake as I write this. The good news is that I have been tremor-free since about three.
Sunday, February 5
I slept well but heavily (in that it was hard to roll or adjust) for about three hours, was happily awake for one, then slept for four moving progressively more easily to where I really expected, once awake, to bound up and run around the apartment. Instead, I was super limp but oddly light rather than dragging, like I was in danger of floating if I didn’t concentrate on my feet.
Irina changed my clothes after breakfast and we went to Piazza del Duomo to walk. When we arrived, there was a tractor meet slowly filling the square, tractors of all sizes and shapes, all immaculately clean, and they just kept coming, maybe 100 of them in total. We tried walking the sunny side of the sagrato, but the combination of arriving tractors and feeling odd on my feet doomed our accomplishing a real walk, so we gave up and went to the Cat Park where I napped in the sun among contented felines for twenty minutes. The nap did not spawn zombi-ism, somehow miraculously.
Once home, the feeling of wanting to limply float away persisted, but tremors were almost entirely absent all morning, and the couple of times I experienced a poverty of movement freeze, they were accompanied neither by tightening muscles nor by shaking of any genre.
However, after lunch I took a short nap (because I had to) and woke with RLS and mild zombi-ness. When I paced to free the legs, walking was speed-erratic, something I thought I’d left behind several months ago. Recovery follows no straight lines but damn it’s hard to accept sometimes.
Monday, February 6
Sleep was often interrupted and stubbornly difficult, but one way or the other I got six and a half hours before Roman dutifully shook my foot at 09:15. Walking was a little better than yesterday immediately on my feet, but most important, the feeling of oppression so prevalent yesterday was gone. In its place was a giddy acceptance for exactly where I am in this process.
Had an acupuncture treatment to open up the Du channel, left me even more floaty than yesterday, but also more relaxed in various ways.