I’m full of tremor today. Even as I sit typing my blog, the laptop is bobbing around on my lap because of the tremor in my legs. My left leg is the worst, but tremor control throughout my body leaves a lot to be desired. I’m tempted to adjust my neurostimulator, but I don’t. My symptoms seem so variable at the moment that I might incorrectly attribute a change in them to a change that I make on my device.
I’ve been considering making a few videos and posting them on YouTube. We have all seen the miraculous DBS videos there, where the shaking wreck of a person with Parkinson’s Disease is transformed into George Clooney following the introduction of a couple of volts to the brain, and we all cling on to the hope that our surgery will also transform our lives in this manner. I want to make a video or two that illustrates the ups and downs following DBS, the sort of problems that I have encountered whilst trying to get the programming right. I used to do a little commercial video work in my dim and distant past, and still have all of the video equipment stored in my loft (it was broadcast quality in the early 2000’s, but HD has made it all obsolete now). I spend some time rooting around in the loft and locate my camera, tripod, and the necessary leads to transfer the captured video to my MacBook. So far, so good. I spend some time making sure that I can successfully record video on the camera (it hasn’t been used for at least 6 years), transfer the video to my MacBook, and output the edited end result in a format suitable for publishing on YouTube. Okay, that’s my achievement for today. Now I need to work on the content, but that’s for another day!
I take the dog for her afternoon walk, then sit on the sofa and try to get my tremor to calm down. I self-medicate (cannabis) and this is a great help. Aside from the tremor, I’m doing pretty well today – balance is fair, dystonia is bearable, dyskinesia is almost non-existent, and I’m motivated enough to go searching around in the loft! Energy levels are fairly pants, but thats probably because of the work I did on the allotment yesterday.