My wife is going back to work this morning, so I am going to take the opportunity to shoot a couple of pieces to camera while I have the house to myself. I’m meeting with a friend of a friend this afternoon over at The Vernon Arms to discuss Parkinson’s Disease and Deep Brain Stimulation. “How exciting!”, I hear you cry. This means that I have almost 4 hours in which to walk the dog, set up the camera and microphone, and actually shoot 2 short pieces to camera, each of which is less than 10 seconds long.
It’s a beautiful Summer morning, and it’s perfect for dog walking. With that done and Popmaster listened to (and participated in – not a good scoring day for me today) I have 3 hours left – loads of time!
I have a lot of tremor today, in both sides, but mainly in my right arm and left leg. Dyskinesia seems a little better this morning (again), I may turn the voltage a notch on the right tomorrow if it stays away. In the meantime, I self-medicate (cannabis) so that I can do the necessary camera work without appearing to be shaking.
By the time I’m ready to step in front of the camera, I have 20 minutes left. Still possible! A frantic 15 minutes ensues, with many takes and many very rude words each time I loused it up. Happy with my efforts, I am quickly putting stuff away before leaving the house when I notice that my radio microphone was set to “mute”, so I have made a flaming silent movie! What a berk!
We spend a very pleasant 90 minutes having a couple of lunchtime beers (haven’t done that for a very long time) and a good old chinwag about our symptoms, diagnosis, medication and how Deep Brain Stimulation might help him improve his quality of life. I switched my device off for a minute or two to show him how DBS calms my tremor – very glad to switch it back on!
Back home, I manage to get the shots that I got this morning, but this time with sound.
My wife returns, we have dinner, and then I self-medicate (cannabis) because my tremor is bothering me again.