Dance for Parkinson's

In my last post, I mentioned World Parkinson's day being on April 11th. Social media was alive with people dancing for Parkinson's and yours truly duly took it upon himself to upload a video to Tik-Tok, Twitter and the like. I have uploaded a copy here for those wishing to suffer the pain of laughing too hard.

The other major event since the last post was that on World Parkinson's day, I had an appointment with a Parkinson's specialist at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) in Singapore. TTSH is one of the older more established hospitals in Singapore and it really is quite large, more like a shopping mall. The processes in Singapore can be annoying for people like me, ill-disciplined, radical, anti-authority...you know the type. Firstly, they are still wearing masks in the hospital settings, then you need to get a queue number (who invented queue numbers, what a loser) to go through the registration process, then onto the first queue "next to door ten, sir" to get your weight, height and blood pressure noted. Next step, "Please go and queue near door twenty sir". I wanted to shout 'House'. We waited for a while, not long to be honest, where we met the Parkinson's Specialist.(More later). Then we had to go to the Pill Counter, that's nice I thought as there was only a small queue and I could get the tablets and leave....oh, that would be too simple. The pill counter was a lady that asked if you knew what tablets you were getting and did you now they were expensive. I presume she was a buffer before you lose your rag at the pharmacy, when you actually have to pay for them🤣. After that session, then you go down to the main entrance where the pharmacy is located. Yes, you guessed it, get yet another queue number, then you get the tablets and leave and they send the bill in the post...that latter part is great. In all honesty their systems do work, sad, but true.

The actual consultation was positive, a Parkinson's specialist. I asked about the possibility of increasing the Leva-Dopa (Dopamine) at times when I feel the off time is affecting my ability to feel comfortable. He was brutally honest, and explained increasing the dosage was fraught with difficulties, more side effects such as dyskinesia, nightmares, hallucinations etc. We had also discussed my 34 years of sobriety and recovery from alcoholism and he explained the Dopamine may increase the risk of me drinking or getting back into active addiction. Scary thought that one. He did explain that surgery (DBS) was not on the agenda for now as I was early stages and doing ok.

What the doctor did do was introduce me to dopamine agonists, tablets that mimic the effect of dopamine so reduce some of the physical side effects although the risk of slipping into active addiction was still high. Being in recovery and living a day at time for the last 34+ years will hopefully help me with that one. I have a lot of support in AA. Finally, I have been taking to tablets for only a few days, mood has been a bit flat, but all in all I am alive so we'll start with that and go forward.