Dyskinesia wakes me up at 5am, and I struggle to get back to sleep again. I wake up time and time again. I have some tremor in my left leg, and some mid/lower back discomfort, which I’m pretty sure is settings related. I felt quite positive about my Group “A” settings yesterday, but they are definitely not as good as they should be this morning. When I actually get up, it’s clear that I will have to change my settings again, sooner rather than later! I turn down the voltage by 2 notches on my right hand side (because the dyskinesia is on my right hand side), and it does reduce it a tad. I’m now receiving 1.7v on the left and 1.9v on the right.
The voltage reduction makes itself known in a number of ways other than a reduction in dyskinesia… Tremor on my right side, particularly my arm, is quite strong, and dystonia in my right foot is really bloody uncomfortable. My balance, which I thought was reasonably good at the moment, has also declined sharply, and I repeatedly catch myself on the verge of falling. My voice is stronger and clearer than it has been for a while, and that’s very welcome. Both of my arms are feeling weak and aching.
My wife and I go to North Walsham to get some food shopping. Exercise often affects the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, so I am hoping that I can walk some of them off. We walk around Lidl, and nothing has changed. When we get home, I rope in my wife to help me capture some footage for another (non-DBS) video I’m planning for my Youtube channel about the health benefits of kefir, a pro-biotic fermented milk product that I produce.
Video footage captured and imported to my MacBook, we take the dog for a walk around the village and distribute some leaflets promoting my wife’s business – 2 birds, 1 stone! We are only out for about 30 minutes, but it takes its toll and I’m sweating like a very sweaty thing, and in need of a sit-down. If I was expecting the exercise to reduce the tremors, then I’m afraid I’m extremely disappointed – if anything, they are worse. I’m going to hang on in there until tomorrow lunchtime before making any more changes to my settings though – it really does take 24 hours for things to settle down properly after a change.
I knock up a rough edit of the video, and it’s looking good. Voiceover, sub-titles and music are on the agenda for tomorrow.