Wednesday, February 22
Today, my invisible Friend read me a riot act. For the first time in a while, I slept poorly last night and all due to an inability to arrange my limbs into a comfortable position. So this morning I was too tired to walk (we tried, though) and that allowed me to sulk come my alone time in the afternoon. Friend’s response was basically this:
“You have spent your life undermining, minimizing, or dismissing every gift, advantage or talent you were granted, and now you are treating recovery in the same fashion! Stop it! Forgive yourself and move on! The universal struggle is to avoid self pity for having to live within the same borders that all creatures do. Engage, cherish, and contribute.”
The evening walk was much stronger even though I still felt off.
Thursday, February 23
The day was dominated by a non-functioning email account that I’ve been struggling to fix for three days. Today introduced a customer service person I couldn’t describe my problem to, and who sent me instructions to do what I’ve been doing for days without success. The whole experience frayed my nervous system and sucked the life right out of me. Otherwise, I walked well and slept a lot.
Friday, February 24
Towards the end of an afternoon visit with friends, and after about an hour of good conversation, the bottom fell out of my energy and I could effectively do nothing. It was only after Roman’s changing me and taking me to the Duomo for an evening stroll that I realized that I had probably gone limp when the dopamine ran out. Ideally, I should have done nothing while the brain recharged, but I was already committed to movement, so I did five laps (about a kilometer) and felt at least more normal, if not energetic, afterwards.
Saturday, February 25
Very unusually when Iryna woke me at 09:15, I didn’t want to get up. I remained half asleep until a fifty minute nap at 14:00, which needed about an hour’s recovery before I could walk. But I felt especially well underneath it all, like I was watching all this play on the surface to no real consequence. At some point during the morning, it seemed that the tremor turned off for an hour or two. I’d been trying to turn it off at the sacrum yesterday and before bed last night, but this morning it seems to have happened on its own.
(from Recovering from Parkinson’s by Janice Hadlock)
“I hypothesize that the origin of the electrical ‘static’ driving the tremor is in the sacrum (bone at the bottom of the spine), not the thalamus. I have seen that, in people with PD, when the pause-driven sacral tremor is temporarily turned off (using a type of visualization exercise described in the book Stuck on Pause), the brain’s internal tremor also ceases.”
Sunday, February 26
I woke after eight hours with the tremors turned off, or at least at such a low volume as to be barely noticeable. This lasted through lunch. After lunch I napped for 35 minutes and that sent all the comforts of the morning to the trash heap. Not quite all. I still felt a deep sense of wellbeing with a strong and affectionate connection to my Friend. Slowly through the afternoon and evening, the brain stabilized, and I was still again by bedtime.
Monday, February 27
It is said that PD patients have an internal life characterized by sulkiness and petulance – and maybe not just internal. Letting go of those habits for me is like peeling an onion. But it is necessary because the recovery process depends on their absence or exposure.
I woke this morning rather still, and like yesterday, maintained the stillness until after lunch when naps and their aftermath destroyed it. Stillness returned after the evening walk, prompted in part perhaps by a felt presence of my sweet parents. I also asked my Friend for help in quieting the sacrum, and it was forthcoming.