Has it really been since March that I’ve bothered with this thing? Holy crap do I need to get better at the old organizational skills. Or maybe if I delete some things from my schedule so I have a little more time to do those things that I enjoy—like writing, for instance—then maybe, just maybe, I’ll be more apt to sit in front of the computer and type out my musings on a more regular basis.
This blog was originally intended to cover the topic of Parkinson’s Disease (namely my own). I remember back in March struggling with just the concept of having this bastard so much it was all I could do not to scream. I can’t exactly say the same now, since I’ve been living with it and have been learning to adapt to it, but the temptation of wanting to let out my frustrations in a piercing yawp of fury and exasperation is still way too enticing.
To be fair, I can’t say that I have adapted all that well to the beast. Not yet. As of now, I have to say that I’ve had to call off from work for various PD related reasons. Sometimes I’m too stiff and my body rebels against motion. Sometimes I shake so much it affects the coordination in my left hand, too. (I have a story about that one too, but that’s for later.) On other occasions, my right knee wants to give out with no warning and I know that if I go to work, then I’ll drop a patient during a transfer from bed to chair. The last call off was when I fell and twisted my ankle. The good news was no swelling, the bad news was pain.
When I do wind up calling off from work, then starts the inner lamentations that I don’t ever say out loud. This is the first time I’ve put them out there thus far, and may or may not be the last. This is where I start to wonder how long I’m going to last with the job. At what point do I get called into the front office for them to say, “I’m sorry, Jon, but you’re too dangerous to be working the floor?” With Jenny’s being a stay-at-home mom, the issue of health insurance becomes huge. I need it, and fear losing it. The VA will help me, but that still leaves Jenny and Christian flapping out there in the wind.
But my biggest frustration, the most annoying part of this whole thing is not the falls. It’s not the stiffness, or the shaking. It’s trying, when I am at work, to open those damned-blasted milk cartons. The eight ounce cardboard milk cartons like you, oh reader, got in school. Follow me here, reader, and I’ll explain to you how it is. Do you remember, at lunch time, going up for your tray of mystery meat and discolored corn, how you always got your little carton of milk from the lady with the extra tight hairnet which you were sure was the cause of the contorted scowl on her face? Yeah, that’s right, the scary one who only ever said, “White or Chocolate?” in one of those I’ve smoked for forty years and now I sound like a man voices. Don’t tell me you don’t remember her, reader, cause she is the source of most childhood nightmares. Do you remember also, at times, when you sat down with said carton of chocolate milk—white milk wasn’t as popular in the kids without parents around lunch room—and forgetting to look at the carton for the side that says open here and opening it from the wrong end? Do you remember how hard that was? Exactly.
As I was saying before I went off on my little tangent there, is that this was a blog about PD and my life with it. So the question is do I find some way to make it PD related or do I go off on tangents about other things. Don’t get me wrong, there will always be posts about my PD, because it’s just part of my life in general now. My next posting will probably be a fleshed out version of the story of how my life changed in a hurry, but I’m thinking some more general musings on unrelated topics will be good for the soul here, and will be a lot more fun. What do you think, reader?
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