About Parkinson's - I Promise this time

As I was saying, Parkinson's is a fascinating disease. Most people think of PD as the shaking tremor that they associate with old people. In younger patients the symptoms are more varied, and we cycle precariously from one clinical state to another, with the occasional and precious hour or two of "on" time, in the day.

This daily dance has extreme lunges that go from the painful muscle spasms and cramps of dystonia to the involuntary muscle movements of dyskinesia, that most people associate with Michael J. Fox. The dyskinesia dance is actually the side effect of the standard med for PD: Levodopa. Levodopa looses effectiveness over the years. It is not particularly effective for
older patients, which might explain why they don't have the extreme swings in the dance. Younger patients tend to respond more to Levodopa in the early stages, some even experience a honeymoon phase where the Levodopa works very consistently, almost miraculously for a few years. In my case, I had about five months of honeymoon. Some of you might remember my "Walking and Leaping and Praising God" speech at church. In it I said that I didn't know if God had healed me, or if He just granted me a Divine Reprieve from the pain,                       

 Parkinson's is a progressive non-terminal disease. That means that the symptoms get worse and worse and then you die. PD doesn't kill you, it just makes life increasingly more miserable until you die of choking, or pneumonia, or a fatal fall.

I hadn't meant for this post to be so morbid and depressing, But if I am going to be honest in these blogs, some of the thinks I thunk are morbid and depressing. It is what it is. Godspeed!