Day 212
Today is the 203rd day of taking a full dose of Azilect and the 95th day of taking a 1.5 mg dose of Pramipexole (after 68 days on a .75 mg dose).
When people who know that I have Parkinson's, ask "how are you?" I always respond "I am well. How are you?" I do this because I am actually feeling pretty good. The cold weather, however, seems to counteract my medication. In the fact, the colder it is, the stiffer my right arm becomes.
Last week, I was at Frost Valley, which is a great YMCA camp in upstate New York. You basically get pretty nice accommodations, three meals and four activities a day for very reasonable rate. My wife, son, and I along with a friend and her daughter, did some snow tubing, archery, hiking and rockclimbing. When rockclimbing, however, I was reminded that I still do Parkinson's. My left arm was working great as well as my right and left feet. In order to keep my balance, I was able to quickly change my left hand from handhold to handhold, but when it came time to move my right arm in the same way, I failed. There is of course a harness, so while I failed I did not fall. The way I got around the slow reaction time in my right arm was to make two moves instead of one. In other words, if under normal circumstances, I would have reached up quickly with my right hand, I reached with my left for that same handhold first and then changed to my right in a slower more controlled movement and then place my left hand back on its original handhold. I estimate that this increase my climbing time by about 30%. Is this the end of the world? No. In fact, one could surmise that the fact that I could climb the rock wall at all was what was important.
So if you ask, "how are you?"
The answer still is, "I am well. How are you?"
